Based in Hong Kong, Zoher Abdoolcarim was appointed as Asia Editor, TIME International, in June 2008 overseeing TIME’s award-winning Asia edition. Prior to this role, he was a senior editor at TIME Asia, a position he held since 2002 where he helped shape all aspects of TIME’s coverage of Asia. His cover stories include a June 2007 article on the 10th anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, a November 2011 lead essay comparing China and India, and a prologue on India ahead of its landmark May 2014 elections. Zoher also writes commentary on Asian affairs for TIME.

Prior to joining TIME Asia, Zoher was managing editor of Asiaweek and an editor at Singapore-owned Asian Business. Over the course of his career, Zoher has been a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, with reporting assignments in the Philippines, India, Brunei and Hong Kong. He has been involved in watershed Asia stories including the Ninoy Aquino assassination, the ousters of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and former Indonesian President Suharto, the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, Hong Kong’s handover to China, the Asian financial crisis and the continuing impact of the rise of China on the region and the world.

Over the years, Zoher has interviewed many of Asia’s leaders. An ethnic Indian born and raised in Hong Kong, Zoher is a fluent Cantonese speaker and a British national. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

But Ho Ming is a retired planner in telecommunications and information services, which endured drastic and disruptive transformation in technology, organization, and market structure in the past 4 decades.  His current projects provide robotic and analytic solutions to social groups, including school-age children, who aspire for a more sustainable but well-informed life in the age of Big Data.  In his leisure, Ho Ming enjoys organic farming, hiking, robotic dance choreographing and on-line chess games. Ho Ming is a trustee of the WYNG Foundation.

Senior Curator of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Since 2013, Clément Chéroux has served as Chief Curator of the Department of Photography for the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and joined that museum as Curator of Photography in 2007. Prior to that, he lectured on the history of photography at the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, the University of Paris III and the University of Lausanne, and served as executive editor of the magazine Études Photographiques published by the Société Française de photographie. Chéroux has also served as an independent curator. As author or editor, Chéroux has published more than 40 books and catalogs on photography and its history.

Chéroux earned a PhD in Art History from the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, an MA in Aesthetics, Technology and Artistic Creation from the University of Paris VIII and a degree from the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie, Arles. He was a visiting research fellow in the Art History Department at Princeton University and a guest scholar at the J. Paul Getty Museum Photography Department.

Chéroux was awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit (Knight) for the exhibition, Edvard Munch, the Modern Eye, the Nadar Award for Photography Book of the Year for La subversion des images, surréalism, photographie, film (with Quentin Bajac) and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire for The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (with Andreas Fischer).

May Fung created over 10 short experimental films between 1977 and 1985 and over 20 video works from 1986 onwards. She subsequently created video installations and pioneered  video art in theatre. Fung is passionate about the development of visual and performing arts, and received a fellowship from the Asian Culture Council for researching video art in New York in 1994. In 1999 Fung was awarded the Hong Kong Arts Development Council “Arts Development Scholarship” for video installation art. She has been an assessor and juror for various video and film festivals/exhibition in Hong Kong, and is now an examiner and advisor to the Home Affairs Bureau and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.  Fung is also the Chair of Art & Culture Outreach, a non-profit charitable arts organisation in Hong Kong and the honorary treasurer of Fresh Wave Film Festival Limited.

Brendan Embser is the managing editor of Aperture magazine. He is the editor of the Aperture books Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph (2018), Chloe Dewe Mathews: Caspian: The Elements (2018), and Ethan James Green: Young New York (2019), and the managing editor of Aperture Conversations: 1985 to the Present (2018). Embser has served on the jury for the Addis Foto Fest, the Changjiang International Photography and Video Art Biennale, Photo Is:rael, and the Sony World Photography Awards. Formerly the director of exhibitions at The Walther Collection, Embser holds a BA in English from Haverford College and an MA in Africana Studies from New York University, and he has contributed essays and interviews to Another Africa, Contemporary And, n+1, Objektiv, Aperture Online, and Aperture’s PhotoBook Review.

Yumi Goto is an independent photography curator, editor, researcher, consultant, educator and publisher who focuses on the development of cultural exchanges that transcend borders.

She collaborates with local and international artists who live and work in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, current social problems, human rights abuses and women’s issues. She often works with human rights advocates, international and local NGOs, humanitarian organizations and as well as being involved as a nominator and juror for the international photographic organizations, festivals and events.
She is now based in Tokyo and also a co-founder and curator for the Reminders Photography Stronghold which is a curated membership gallery space in Tokyo enabling a wide range of photographic activities.

Zhuang Wubin is a writer, curator and artist.

As a writer/curator, Zhuang focuses on the photographic practices of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong. He uses the medium as a prism to explore the following trajectories: photography and Chineseness, periodicals and photobooks as sites of historiography, and photography’s entanglements with nationalism and the Cold War.

Zhuang is an editorial board member of Trans-Asia Photography Review, recipient of the Prince Claus Fund research grant (2010) and a Lee Kong Chian research fellow at the National Library of Singapore (Dec 2017 to Jun 2018). He is a grantee of the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Greater China Research Grant 2018. He has been invited to research residency programmes at Institute Technology of Bandung (2013), Asia Art Archive (AAA), Hong Kong (2015), Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan (2017) and the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project at AAA (2018). He is a contributing curator of the Chiang Mai Photo Festival (2015, 2017).

Published by NUS Press, Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey(2016) is his fourth book.  

As an artist, Zhuang uses photography and text to visualise the shifting experiences of Chineseness in Southeast Asia.

Chan Yuk Keung obtained his BA degree from the Department of Fine Arts, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and his M.F.A. from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the US in the 80’s, he then joined The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1989 and taught there for over 25 years. Chan has participated in over 100 exhibitions, among which are “The 51st  Venice Biennale” and “The 2nd  Asia Pacific Art Triennial”. Chan was the chief editor for “Hong Kong Visual Art Yearbook” for several years, now the board member of ParaSite Art Space, Hong Kong Institute of Aesthetic Education; advisor of Asian Art Archive and Yale-China Association. His research interests are Hong Kong Art, Mixed Media and Public Art.

Kevin WY Lee is a photographer and creative director based in Singapore. He participates vigorously in photography and art across the region as a practitioner, curator, producer and editor. In 2010, he founded Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA), an influential platform for Photography & Visual Arts in Asia. Kevin has been a curator and nominator for various festivals and programs, including the Angkor Photo Festival, Prix Pictet Award and PhotoQuai Biennale. He has also served as a jury for international competitions including the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards, Singapore Creative Circle Awards, and Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards. Most recently, he authored the photobook Suddenly The Grass Became Greener.

Lives in Hong Kong
Born Munich, Germany

The focus of the German photographer Michael Wolf’s work is life in mega cities. Many of his projects document the architecture as well as the vernacular culture of metropolises. Wolf grew up in Canada, Europe and the United States, studying at UC Berkeley and at the Folkwang School with Otto Steinert in Essen, Germany. He moved to Hong Kong in 1994 where he worked for 8 years as contract photographer for Stern magazine.  Since 2001, Wolf has been focusing on his own projects, many of which have been published as books .

Wolf’s work has been exhibited in numerous locations, including the Venice Bienniale for Architecture, the Sao Paulo Biennial for Architecture,  Aperture Gallery, New York; Museum Centre Vapriikki, Tampere, Finland, Museum for Work in Hamburg, Germany, Kestner Museum, Hannover, Germany, Folkwang Museum, Germany, the Hong Kong Shenzhen Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. His work is held in many permanent collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, California; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum Folkwang, Essen, M+ Museum, Hong Kong, the German Museum for Architecture, Frankfurt, and the Heritage Museum, HK.

He has won first prize in the World Press Photo Award Competition on two occasions (2005 & 2010) and an honorable mention (2011). In 2010 and 2016, Wolf was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet photography prize.

He has published more than 32 photo books including More HK Informal Seating Arrangements (Peperoni Press, 2015,) HK Umbrella (Peperoni Press, 2015,) HK Flora (Peperoni Press, 2014,)  HK Trilogy (Peperoni Press, 2013,)  Small God Big City (Hong Kong University Press, 2013,) Bottrop Ebel 1976 (Peperoni Press, 2012,) Tokyo  Compression Three (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2012,) Architecture of Density (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2012,)  Hong Kong Corner Houses  (Hong Kong University Press, 2011,)  Portraits (Superlabo, Japan, 2011,)  Tokyo Compression Revisited (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2011,)  Real Fake Art   (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2011,)  FY (Peperoni Press, 2010,) A Series of Unfortunate Events. (Peperoni Press, 2010,) Tokyo  Compression (Peperoni Press/Asia One, 2010,) Hongkong Inside Outside (Asia One/Peperoni Press, 2009,) The Transparent City (Aperture, 2008,) and Sitting in China (Steidl, 2002).

Jacqueline Francis, Ph.D., is a writer, curator, art historian, and educator. She is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012). With Ruth Fine, she co-edited Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011). With Kathy Zarur, she co-curated the contemporary art exhibition “Where Is Here” for the Museum of the Diaspora in 2016-17.

Francis presently serves on the Advisory Boards of Panorama: Art and Visual Culture of the United States, Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture, and San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery. She is also Board President of the Queer Cultural Center (QCC), a resource and site for LGBT artistic expression in San Francisco.

Francis is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Belonging to the last generation of university of students under the colonial rule, Leung studied Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong but witnessed the Handover as a reporter. Weaving through art and politics, she teaches, writes, researches, cooks, meditates and takes to the streets. She was a member of Para/Site Art Space and In-Media (Hong Kong). Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include, among others, artistic labour, city space and cultural politics. Her essays and commentaries have been published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, InMedia (Hong Kong), City Magazine, Leap, etc. Publications edited by her include Modern Art in a Colony: Narrated by Hon Chi-fan at the Millennium, Odd One In: Hong Kong Diary (by Pak Sheung-cheun), QK – Specimen Collection of Chan Yuk Keung, The Red Twenty-years of Ricky Yeung Sau-churk etc.

Profile Picture by Topaz Leung

Gladys Li studied law at and graduated from Cambridge University. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales after which she practised as a barrister in chambers in London for 10 years before returning home to Hong Kong in 1982 where she entered full-time practice as a barrister. Shortly thereafter, she became a member of the Bar Council.

Her professional practice in human rights and administrative law began when she acted for Vietnamese asylum-seekers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, she took a keen interest in Hong Kong’s future after the Joint Declaration and became a member of the Lobby Group set up to inform British MPs about the importance of the rule of law in Hong Kong, the absence of human rights protections and the lack of democracy.   In 1995 and 1996, she became Chairperson of the Hong Kong Bar Association.

As a member of the Article 23 Concern Group set up with fellow lawyers, she contributed to writing pamphlets to inform the public about the criminal offences  which the HKSAR was expected to legislate for under the Basic Law Article 23.   

She is a founding member of Civic Party and a member of HK2020, of which Mrs. Anson Chan, former chief secretary, is the convener.

She co-authored a chapter on the legal status of Functional Constituencies in “Functional Constituencies A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council”, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2006 and has appeared in cases before and after the handover challenging aspects of the functional constituency system of election.

She continues to practise in the field of constitutional and administrative law and human rights.  She is also a member of the Board of Civic Exchange. 

Sandra S. Phillips is Curator Emerita of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has been with the museum since 1987, and assumed the position of Senior Curator in 1999. In 2017 she assumed the position of Curator Emerita. Phillips has organized numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions of modern and contemporary photography including Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870, Diane Arbus Revelations, Helen Levitt, Dorothea Lange: American Photographs, Daido Moriyama: Stray Dog, Crossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing West, Police Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence and An Uncertain Grace: Sebastião Salgado. She holds degrees from the City University of New York (Ph.D.), Bryn Mawr College (M.A.), and Bard College (B.A.). Phillips was previously curator at the Vassar College Art Museum, and has taught at various institutions including the State University of New York, New Paltz; Parsons School of Design; San Francisco State University; and the San Francisco Art Institute. She was a Resident at the American Academy in Rome and received a grant from The Japan Foundation in 2000.

Abby Chen is currently the Curator and Artistic Director at the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. She initiated the Xian Rui/Fresharp Artist Excellence Series since 2008, the first of its kind in the country supporting mid-career artists of Chinese descent in US. In 2009, she launched Present Tense Biennial. In 2010, she organized Gender Identity Symposium, a multi-city forum in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, followed by the 2011 exhibition WOMEN我們 (Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami). Her most recent project is the social practice based experiment in San Francisco neighborhood with Keywords School and Social Botany, led by artist Xu Tan with support from San Francisco Art Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.

Her other curatorial ventures include Moment For Ink, challenging nationalism and sexism in traditional Chinese Painting. The exhibition opened in various sites including Asian Art Museum, San Francisco State University, and traveled to Zhejiang Art Museum in China. She has curated or had loan her exhibition to Yerba Buena Center For the Arts and Museum of Chinese in America in New York. Beginning in 2009, she also led and managed San Francisco Public Art Initiative of Arts-in-Storefront and Central Subway Temporary Public Art for Stockton Station, as well as Culture Mapping, to investigate arts in immigrant neighborhood and advocate for city funding on underserved communities.

In 2012, Abby Chen was Summer Scholar from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She graduates with Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts.

MaryAnn Camilleri is the founder and current Festival Director of The Magenta Foundation. Established in 2004, Magenta is Canada’s pioneering non-profit, charitable arts publishing house. Magenta was created to organize promotional opportunities for artists, in an international context, through circulated exhibitions and publications. Through its diversity with book publishing, online content and Flash Forward Festival Boston, the foundation is embracing the ever-changing technology era, forging alliances with international galleries, curators and artists. Magenta’s latest diversification and growth will continue through Magenta POP Pittsburgh.These POP UP exhibitions will have a permanent gallery in Pittsburgh in 2016. Magenta works with respected individuals and international organizations to help increase recognition for artists while uniting the global photography community.

Christopher Phillips has been the curator at the International Center of Photography in New York City since 2000. He has organized numerous exhibitions of historic and contemporary photography. In 2004, he and Wu Hung organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China.” He has curated subsequent exhibitions exploring contemporary Asian photography, including “Atta Kim: On-Air” (2006), “Shanghai Kaleidoscope” (2008), “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan” (2008), “H20: Art on the Horizon of Nature” (2010), and “Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide” (2011). His publications include Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings 1913-1940. He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, where he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Photo by Albrecht Tübke

Paul arrived in 1984 and soon started his own business. In 2004, after years of corporate work, he felt compelled to help improve our society. He founded Designing Hong Kong, and urban advocacy NGO. Since 2010 Paul has dedicated himself full-time to public service and is the elected district councillor of Pok Fu Lam. Paul is a hongkonger and fiercely independent democrat. Paul has a Masters in Social Science (Economics) from the Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and a Masters of Arts (Transport Policy and Planning) from The University of Hong Kong. Visit www.paulzimmerman.hk and www.designinghongkong.com for more information.  

Kalero has a Media Communication degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Former resident at Benetton’s Fabrica (Italy). Founder of the OjodePez magazine (Spain), co-founder of Invaliden1 Galerie (Berlin), of the art magazine The World According To (Berlin), and the pan-Asian photography magazine, Punctum (India). He directed the Ojodepez Photo Meeting Barcelona. For three years he was the art director of the GetxoPhoto Festival (Bilbao). At the present is part of the team developing an online platform for new media called SCREEN. He has been part of the WYNG Photo Award jury team for the past three years (Hong Kong). He was the Artistic Director for the 4th and 5th Biennial PhotoQuai, held at the Museum Quai Branly (Paris). Cofounder of photo festival, GoaPhoto (Panajim, India). He has been teaching at the Joop Swart Masterclass 2014. In 2015, he was invited by the Armenian government to make a collective exhibition on Genocide, on the occasion of the 100 years of the Armenian Genocide. Also in the same year, he was the chairman of the World Pride Award Jury (Amsterdam).

Lives and works in the UK and internationally. Louise Clements is Artistic Director of QUAD (www.derbyquad.co.uk), a centre for contemporary art, film and new technologies, since 2001, and co-founder and Artistic Director of FORMAT International Photography Festival (www.formatfestival.com) in Derby, UK, since 2004. Since 1998 as an independent curator she has initiated many commissions, publications, mass participation, art, film and photography exhibitions. Louise was recently awarded the Milapfest Fellowship 2013 and the Blow-up Fellowship India 2012. She was guest curator at Habitat Centre and Haus Khas BlowUp (Delhi, India 2012); Dong Gang Photography Festival (South Korea, 2013); Dali International Photography Festival (China, 2013); Noorderlicht 20/20 (Groningen, Netherlands, 2013); Photoquai Biennale (Paris, 2015); Christophe Guye 2020vision (Switzerland 2015); Hamburg Phototriennale Container City (Germany, 2015); Venice Biennale, the Leisure Principle EM15 (2015). She regularly writes about contemporary art for books and magazines, guest Editor for Archivo(Portugal), OjodePez(Italy), HijackedIII(Australia), PhotoCinema(uk), South Korean Photography Magazine. Editor at Large for 1000 Words www.1000wordsmag.com . She is an international photography juror, portfolio reviewer, workshop leader, speaker and nominator throughout Europe, America and Asia.

Margaret Ng is a barrister in private practice, having been called to the Bar in Hong Kong in 1988. She received her law degree from the University of Cambridge and PCLL from the University of Hong Kong. She holds a doctorate in philosophy from Boston University. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in philosophy from the University of Hong Kong.

She was formerly a Member of the Legislative Council of the HKSAR representing the Legal Functional Constituency. First elected in 1995, she stepped down in 2012, after serving the public for 17 years as a legislator. She has a long list of past service in public committees including the Central Policy Unit (1989 – 90) and the Operation Review Committee of the ICAC (1999 – 2004).

She is also a noted commentator and writer in both English and Chinese. She was appointed Deputy Editor-in-Chief of Ming Pao Daily news from 1986 – 1987, and its Publisher in 1988 – 1990. She is the author of more than 12 Chinese titles. She continues to contribute to the media regularly.

Jehan Chu is an Art Advisor and publisher of the ‘Art Guides’ series of iPhone apps with over 12 years of industry experience. Formerly with Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, and Head of Client Development in Asia, he left in 2008 to start Vermillion Art Collections, a specialized art advisory working with private and corporate art collectors. He now sits on the Board of Directors of Para/Site Art Space and the HK Ambassadors of Design, and is a member of the Asia Art Archive Collector’s Circle steering committee. Jehan also authored the ‘Collectionist’ column for Time Out Magazine and has lectured on collecting art for the Asia Art Forum, ArtHK International Art Fair, as well as major banks and associations. Jehan is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and holds a degree in International Relations and East Asian Studies, as well as instruction certification in Visual Thinking Strategies.

Dr Vivian Taam Wong is Director of Daydream Nation, a Fashion Arts House celebrated for its cross-disciplinary collaboration with other art forms including theatre, dance, music, film and visual arts. Vivian is also Chairman of Friends of the Earth HK, which has a vision to become a leading environmental advocate for a sustainable future, offering ethical solutions to help create environmentally sustainable public policies, business practices and community lifestyles. As a former Public Health Specialist in Population Health & Nutrition at The World Bank, she advocates social justice through daily practice from innovation to implementation.

Ooi is the CEO of fine jewelry ecommerce site, Plukka.com, which launched in December 2011. Plukka sells jewelry under its own brand name, designed by either Ooi or her design team.

Before Plukka, Ooi was the CEO of Clean Air Network (CAN), an environmental NGO based in Hong Kong that focuses on air pollution and public health, from 2009 to 2011. Ooi founded Clean Air Network with Christine Loh, a well-known Asian environmentalist. At CAN, Ooi took the approach of trying to influence government policymaking on air quality issues by working closely with business interests. In addition, Ooi conducted many consumer-style campaigns including a petition sign-up campaign through more than 200 restaurants and gyms, (BBC), the creation of a spoof advertisement for canned oxygen which garnered widespread international attention (NY Times), and Asia’s first environmental art exhibition and auction (NY Times), the Clean Air Auction. Ooi and Loh were nominated to Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential in 2011, for their work on the environment. (Time)

Before CAN, Ooi was the Creative Director of Shanghai Tang for seven years and largely credited with the turnaround of the Chinese luxury brand owned by the Richemont Group.

Ooi frequently speaks and comments on a wide variety of topics, including politics, creativity and consumerism, in addition to blogging about her experiences as an internet CEO at motherplukka.tumblr.com. Complementing her interests in business, environmentalism and tech, Ooi founded a leading Asian contemporary art gallery, Ooi Botos, and is presently the goodwill ambassador for the Multitude Foundation, a non-profit Asian art prize.

Ooi moved to Hong Kong from New York City in 1994, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She was born in Singapore and grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio before attending Columbia University, where she received a B.A.

John Stanmeyer is a photojournalist and humanist dedicated to social and political issues that define our times.

Over the last decade, John has worked nearly exclusively with National Geographic magazine, producing over 12 stories for the magazine and resulting in 10 covers. Between 1998 and 2008, John was a contract photographer for Time magazine, during which time he photographed the war in Afghanistan, the fight for independence in East Timor, the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, and other significant world news events. His years with Time resulted in 18 covers of the magazine.

In 2001, he cofounded with six of the world’s leading photojournalists the VII Photo agency. By 2005 VII was listed in third position in American Photo’s “100 Most Important People in Photography.” VII now represents 20 of the world’s preeminent photojournalists whose careers span 35 years of world history.

January 2015, Stanmeyer became a VII Distinguished Member. The same month, John brought his ten years of stories with National Geographic to National Geographic Creative while his historic archive of 20+ years of visual history remains at VII.

He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the prestigious Robert Capa award (Overseas Press Club), Magazine Photographer of the Year (POYi), and numerous World Press, Picture of the Year and NPPA awards. In 2008, his National Geographic cover story on global malaria received the National Magazine Award. In 2012 was nominated for an Emmy with the VII documentary film series, Starved for Attention and in 2014 was the recipient of the World Press Photo award for his photograph from Djibouti titled, Signal.

John has published a number of books including Island of the Spirits, a journalistic/anthropologic look at Balinese culture documented during the five years he lived on the island. His latest book, a VII Photo Agency collaboration titled Questions Without Answers (Phaidon), was released in 2012, chronically the last 30 years of social conflict and change around the world.

In 2013, John opened Stanmeyer Gallery & Shaker Dam Coffeehouse in West Stockbridge, Mass, combining photography and education around his passion for brilliant coffee, wrapping the two around ethically procured, human rights-based direct trade coffee with the social issues represented in his photographs.

Stanmeyer lives on a farm with his family and many fireflies over summer in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

Lai-shan SZE graduated from the Baptist University with a Bachelor’s degree in Social Work (Honors) in 1995 and from the University of Hong Kong with a Master of Laws (Human Rights) in 2004. She joined the Society for Community Organization (SoCO) as a community organizer in 1995. In SoCO, she plays a variety of roles, from researcher, organizer, case worker, facilitator to educator. She sees it her duty to exhaust every legal means to empower every underprivileged, to help the poor to get fair opportunities, to be rid of poverty and poor living conditions, to uphold of social justice and protection for human rights.

Lisa Botos is a cultural producer, curator and photo editor. Based in Singapore, she founded Botos., an arts-related, project-orientated initiative with a focus on advisory, curatorial projects and publishing. In 2008 she co-founded Ooi Botos, a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong. Prior, Lisa was Picture Editor for Time magazine in Asia. With her team and international photographers, they developed award-winning commissions. Lisa served as an international curator for the Vladivostok Biennale of Visual Arts 2013 and as an advisor for Photo Shanghai. She was an editorial ambassador for Punctum, a pan-Asian photography journal.

An advisor to the WMA Masters from 2011-2016, she counselled on the development and management of the awards program. Lisa is a 2015 Fellow of the University of Hong Kong-Clore Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme, an associate curator for Artist Pension Trust (APT), a consultant for the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP) and on the board of The VII Foundation.

Abby Chen is currently the Curator and Artistic Director at the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. She initiated the Xian Rui/Fresharp Artist Excellence Series since 2008, the first of its kind in the country supporting mid-career artists of Chinese descent in US. In 2009, she launched Present Tense Biennial. In 2010, she organized Gender Identity Symposium, a multi-city forum in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, followed by the 2011 exhibition WOMEN我們 (Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami). Her most recent project is the social practice based experiment in San Francisco neighborhood with Keywords School and Social Botany, led by artist Xu Tan with support from San Francisco Art Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.

Her other curatorial ventures include Moment For Ink, challenging nationalism and sexism in traditional Chinese Painting. The exhibition opened in various sites including Asian Art Museum, San Francisco State University, and traveled to Zhejiang Art Museum in China. She has curated or had loan her exhibition to Yerba Buena Center For the Arts and Museum of Chinese in America in New York. Beginning in 2009, she also led and managed San Francisco Public Art Initiative of Arts-in-Storefront and Central Subway Temporary Public Art for Stockton Station, as well as Culture Mapping, to investigate arts in immigrant neighborhood and advocate for city funding on underserved communities.

In 2012, Abby Chen was Summer Scholar from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She graduates with Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts.

Fung Ho-yin has pursued professional education and training in photography and different areas of design in Hong Kong and UK. He is now working as Assistant Professor at the School of Design of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Creating art via alternative photographic processes is his specialism. He has been exhibiting locally and internationally, including Australia, Japan, UK, USA, France, Thailand and China. He held his first solo exhibition of Gum Prints in UK in 2007. He was selected as finalists of National Prints Exhibition (China), International Competition – Printmaking (Philadelphia, USA), and The International Print & Drawing Exhibition (Thailand). His works have been acquired and collected by The Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and museums in China including Shenzhou Print Museum of Sichuan, Gwei Yang Art Museum, Qingdao Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art and the Shenzhen University.

Ho-yin was elected into the Executive Committee of The Hong Kong Graphics Society from 2001 to 2009. He also co-founded the only open print art studio in Hong Kong in 2000 – The Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP), an open printshop to promote visual arts with an emphasis on image making and to provide art services to the public, including the annual Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiesta.

Kalero has a Media Communication degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Former resident at Benetton’s Fabrica (Italy). Founder of the OjodePez magazine (Spain), co-founder of Invaliden1 Galerie (Berlin), of the art magazine The World According To (Berlin), and the pan-Asian photography magazine, Punctum (India). He directed the Ojodepez Photo Meeting Barcelona. For three years he was the art director of the GetxoPhoto Festival (Bilbao). At the present is part of the team developing an online platform for new media called SCREEN. He has been part of the WYNG Photo Award jury team for the past three years (Hong Kong). He was the Artistic Director for the 4th and 5th Biennial PhotoQuai, held at the Museum Quai Branly (Paris). Cofounder of photo festival, GoaPhoto (Panajim, India). He has been teaching at the Joop Swart Masterclass 2014. In 2015, he was invited by the Armenian government to make a collective exhibition on Genocide, on the occasion of the 100 years of the Armenian Genocide. Also in the same year, he was the chairman of the World Pride Award Jury (Amsterdam).

Christine Loh has a long interest and association with the arts. She sat onthe boards of the Hong Kong Festival Fringe, Hong Kong Arts Centre and Chung Ying Theatre Company in the 1980s, was instrumental in the formation of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in her role as a legislator in the 1990s, including serving as its first vice-chairperson. She is a private collector and a published author of many works on a variety of subjects.

Loh is a lawyer by training and a commodities trader by profession. She was a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (1992-1997 and 1998-2000), the co-founder and CEO of the non-profit think tank, Civic Exchange (2000-2012) and the former Under Secretary for the Environment (2012-2017). She was also a founder director of WYNG Foundation. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a director of the Robert HN Ho Family Foundation.

Jehan Chu is an Art Advisor and publisher of the ‘Art Guides’ series of iPhone apps with over 12 years of industry experience. Formerly with Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, and Head of Client Development in Asia, he left in 2008 to start Vermillion Art Collections, a specialized art advisory working with private and corporate art collectors. He now sits on the Board of Directors of Para/Site Art Space and the HK Ambassadors of Design, and is a member of the Asia Art Archive Collector’s Circle steering committee. Jehan also authored the ‘Collectionist’ column for Time Out Magazine and has lectured on collecting art for the Asia Art Forum, ArtHK International Art Fair, as well as major banks and associations. Jehan is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and holds a degree in International Relations and East Asian Studies, as well as instruction certification in Visual Thinking Strategies.

Melissa Karmen Lee is the new Curator of Education and Public Programs for Old Bailey Galleries, Tai Kwun Arts Centre in Hong Kong. Previously, she was  Senior Lecturer on faculty at the English Department at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for 8 years. Lee has published on diaspora, transnational literature and visual art in a academic publications including ‘Welcoming the Other: Hospitality and Citizenship in Chinese American Fiction” (Routledge University Press, 2016), ‘Reconceptualizing Domesticity: Shifting Transatlantic Spheres in New World Female Narratives’ (Art and Aesthetics 2014). She has been an invited and keynote speaker at numerous panels and conferences including Sharjah Art Foundation March Meetings (2015)  ‘Women in the Arts’ at the Asia Society Museum, Hong Kong (2013), and the ‘Arts Writers Convening’ at the Warhol Foundation / Creative Capital, Philadelphia (2011). She gave a TEDX Hong Kong talk entitled ‘Translating the Human Experience” (2013).

Lee is also a public art curator, consultant, and has worked on numerous projects in Hong Kong, China, New Zealand, United States and Canada. Her work on public art has spanned from graffiti commissions to outdoor large-scale sculpture parks, organized public seminars on the subject of Peace, to the creation of an online digital archive. In 2015 she was curator at large for Slought Foundation curating 2 cloud exhibitions ‘ The Jester’s Privilege’ featuring artist duo Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries and ‘Add Oil Machine’ featuring artists Sampson Wong and Jason Lam. She is the founder of Fairytale Project, a 2011 online translation and research archive in collaboration with Slought Foundation and Ai WeiWei.

Leong Ka Tai has been a professional photographer for over 25 years. Born in Hong Kong, he studied engineering at university in the USA and later worked in England. It was during a sojourn in Paris in the early 1970s that he discovered the artistic capabilities of the camera. Returning to Hong Kong in 1976, he set up his studio and subsequently combined photography with extensive travel, especially in China. Since then his photographs have been exhibited in Hong Kong, Europe, the USA and south-east Asia. They have been published in 21 books and numerous magazines, notablyNational Geographic, GEO, Life, the New York Times, the Sunday Telegraph and Paris Match. He has won local and international awards including ‘Artist of the Year’ from the Hong Kong Artists Guild and First Prize for Best Photojournalism in the 1994 Harry Chapin Media Awards (World Hunger Year), New York.

Born in Scotland, Dr. Charles Merewether received his doctorate in Art History at the University of Sydney. He has built a large resume as an Art Historian and curator.

Between 2007-8, Merewether was the Deputy Director of the Cultural District, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi for the Tourism Development & Investment Co. and in 2007 served as the Arts and Culture Consultant for the Emirates Foundation in the UAE and Visiting Professor of Contemporary Art in Suleimania, Kurdistan (2007). He was Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Hong Kong International Art Fair (2007-2009), Artistic Director & Curator of the Biennale of Sydney (2004-2006), Collections Curator at the Getty Center, Los Angeles (1994-2004) and Inaugural Curator of the Museo Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico, (1991-1994).

Merewether has taught at the University of Sydney, Universidad Autonoma in Barcelona, the Universidad Ibero-Americana (Mexico City), and University of Southern California and been recipient of various Fellowships including Research Fellow at both the Institute of Advanced Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University and ZKM, Karlsruhe as well as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Cross Cultural Research, Australian National University (2004-2007), Japan Foundation Research Fellow (2000) and Research Fellow at both Yale University and University of Texas. He is currently the Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Singapore). a senior academic at Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore.

He has curated numerous exhibitions internationally and published widely on modernism and contemporary art in Europe, East Asia, Australia and both North America and the Americas. His recent book publications include a co-edited volume of essays After the Event, (Manchester University Press, 2010); Under Construction: Ai Weiwei (2008), Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan 1950-1970, (2007); General and Commissioning Editor, Zones of Contact (2006) and Editor, The Archive (2006). 

His recent professional practice includes his involvement in the 2011 NAC Advisory Panel, as a Jury for Singapore Pavilion participation at Venice Biennale in 2011, he was part of the EDB committee for Gilman Barracks Project and is the Guest Curator Exhibition Event, Singapore Biennale 2013.

Alex Ng (M.A. in Journalism) is a specialist of visual merchandising. He is also well known by his photo-image writings, editorial experience in photographic magazines and his tutorship in photojournalism. Chief in editing magazines Photo and DC photo, his photojournalism class in Journalism & Communication Faculty, Shue Yan University is a cradle for young talents.”Lying Image”, “Photography as Visual Art” ,”Mastering Photography”, “Photoshop for photographer”, “Mastering Exposure” and up to tens of photography and camera reference books are popular among Alex Ng’s writings.

Alexandra A. Seno is Managing Partner of AXS Asia Partners, a boutique Hong Kong-based project management and advisory practice, engaged in thought-leadership, and optimizing execution of content-led projects, primarily in Asia. Clients include Conde Nast Magazines USA, Mars Incorporated, Intelligence Squared, the Asian Development Bank and the British Council. Alex serves on the board of Para Site Art Space Hong Kong, the city’s leading independent arts non-profit organization, and on the executive committee of the Oriental Ceramic Society of Hong Kong. She is also an advisor to Spring Workshop, an innovative privately funded arts non-profit organization. Alex has written extensively on economics, culture and the economics of culture in Asia, and regularly contributes articles and opinion pieces to The Art Newspaper and The Wall Street Journal. Her work has also been published by the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek Magazine and The Daily Beast.

John Stanmeyer is a photojournalist and humanist dedicated to social and political issues that define our times.

Over the last decade, John has worked nearly exclusively with National Geographic magazine, producing over 12 stories for the magazine and resulting in 10 covers. Between 1998 and 2008, John was a contract photographer for Time magazine, during which time he photographed the war in Afghanistan, the fight for independence in East Timor, the fall of Suharto in Indonesia, and other significant world news events. His years with Time resulted in 18 covers of the magazine.

In 2001, he cofounded with six of the world’s leading photojournalists the VII Photo agency. By 2005 VII was listed in third position in American Photo’s “100 Most Important People in Photography.” VII now represents 20 of the world’s preeminent photojournalists whose careers span 35 years of world history.

January 2015, Stanmeyer became a VII Distinguished Member. The same month, John brought his ten years of stories with National Geographic to National Geographic Creative while his historic archive of 20+ years of visual history remains at VII.

He is the recipient of numerous honors, including the prestigious Robert Capa award (Overseas Press Club), Magazine Photographer of the Year (POYi), and numerous World Press, Picture of the Year and NPPA awards. In 2008, his National Geographic cover story on global malaria received the National Magazine Award. In 2012 was nominated for an Emmy with the VII documentary film series, Starved for Attention and in 2014 was the recipient of the World Press Photo award for his photograph from Djibouti titled, Signal.

John has published a number of books including Island of the Spirits, a journalistic/anthropologic look at Balinese culture documented during the five years he lived on the island. His latest book, a VII Photo Agency collaboration titled Questions Without Answers (Phaidon), was released in 2012, chronically the last 30 years of social conflict and change around the world.

In 2013, John opened Stanmeyer Gallery & Shaker Dam Coffeehouse in West Stockbridge, Mass, combining photography and education around his passion for brilliant coffee, wrapping the two around ethically procured, human rights-based direct trade coffee with the social issues represented in his photographs.

Stanmeyer lives on a farm with his family and many fireflies over summer in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.

Christopher Phillips has been the curator at the International Center of Photography in New York City since 2000. He has organized numerous exhibitions of historic and contemporary photography. In 2004, he and Wu Hung organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, “Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China.” He has curated subsequent exhibitions exploring contemporary Asian photography, including “Atta Kim: On-Air” (2006), “Shanghai Kaleidoscope” (2008), “Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan” (2008), “H20: Art on the Horizon of Nature” (2010), and “Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide” (2011). His publications include Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings 1913-1940. He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, where he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Photo by Albrecht Tübke