Ying Ang
- Text by Andrea Kurland
- Photography by Ying Ang
To celebrate Huck 46: The Documentary Photography Special II, our annual celebration of visual storytelling, we are having a Huck website takeover – Shoot Your World – dedicated to the personal stories behind the photographs we love.
In this regular series, Answers On A Postcard, we ask photographers to get existential and respond to a visual q&a with their images.
Fourth up is Australian-born photographer Ying Ang, whose new self-published photobook Gold Coast – which confronts the Pleasantville facade of her childhood home by marrying picket-fence suburban scenes with tales of drug-related crimes – is gaining prime position in bookstores and photo festivals since launching at the NY Art Book Fair on September 28.
Gold Coast, like much of Ying’s documentary work, casts a fine art lens on issues that simmer beneath the surface. After witnessing a murder as a wide-eyed teen, Ying has avoided memories of her childhood home but with this deeply personal project she’s tackling every demon and coming out on top. “It’s about the deep disparities between icons of safety and the knowledge of danger,” she explains.
Answers On A Postcard #4
What does home feel like?
Amorphous and undefinable.
What does faith look like?
Finding your icons and committing to them.
What’s your greatest fear?
This has been the easiest one so far. Intimacy.
What keeps you up at night?
Beaches, bonfires and bourbon will usually do it.
What helps you sleep?
Knowing that these bad b***ches have my back.
What’s the meaning of life?
Making the most of your moment in the sun.
Any vices?
Always trying to catch the impossible.
Ying Ang’s Gold Coast will feature at the Brighton Photo Biennial (October 4 – November 2, 2014), Scan Tarragona, Tarragona ( ) and Scan Tarragona, Barcelona (February 5 – February 27, 2015)
Buy the book directly from Ying Ang’s personal website and read her personal essay in Huck 46: The Documentary Photography Special II.
Latest on Huck
Plestia Alaqad: “Journalists should focus on humanising people”
Huck’s April interview — Having become one of the most crucial and followed voices from inside Gaza in the aftermath of October 7, the award-winning author and journalist is releasing a new memoir, ‘The Eyes of Gaza’, collating diary entries made over the past 18 months. We caught up with her to hear more about it.
Written by: Isaac Muk
The instrument makers taking DIY music to a whole new level
What does it take to construct a modular synth? How do you turn a block of wood into a double bass? Here, four craftspeople explain why they chose to rip up the rulebooks and build their own music-making machines.
Written by: Daniel Dylan Wray
Southbank Centre reveals new series dedicated to East and Southeast Asian arts
ESEA Encounters — Taking place between 17-20 July, there will be a live concert from YMO’s Haruomi Hosono, as well as discussions around Asian literature, stage productions, and a pop-up Japanese Yokimono summer market.
Written by: Zahra Onsori
In 1971, Pink Narcissus redefined queer eroticism
Camp classic — A new restoration of James Bidgood’s cult film is showing in US theatres this spring. We revisit its boundary pushing aesthetics, as well as its enduring legacy.
Written by: Miss Rosen
As amapiano goes global, where does it leave its roots?
Rainbow grooves — Over the past decade, the house music subgenre has exploded into a worldwide phenomenon. Jak Hutchcraft went to its birthplace of Mamelodi, South Africa, to explore its still-thriving local scene.
Written by: Jak Hutchcraft
Clubbing is good for your health, according to neuroscientists
We Become One — A new documentary explores the positive effects that dance music and shared musical experiences can have on the human brain.
Written by: Zahra Onsori