Chan Bing Fai, Artist of Light

Chan Bing Fai's interest in photography began in early childhood when he was a pupil of the V.I. in the forties and early fifties. He was a member of the V.I. Photographic Society where he learned the fundamentals of photography but he could not afford to own a camera until he was 22. That was in 1952 when he was doing his teacher training at Kirkby in England.

On completing his teacher training in 1954 he was posted back to the Victoria Institution and taught for 11 years. He was Vice-President of the Photographic Society, a Scout Master as well as House Master to Loke Yew House. In 1959 under the Teacher Development Program of the State Department of the U.S.A. he was sent to Arizona State University to study audio-visual education. In 1966 he was promoted as Headmaster of a new lower secondary school in Jalan San Peng, Kuala Lumpur. He left after 5 years and joined the Medical Faculty, University of Malaya as its chief medical illustrator. In 1974 when he joined the Educational Technology Centre, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and served as its technical director until he retired from that position in 1985.

Bing Fai's involvement in photography extends over a period of 40 years. He joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1963 as an ordinary member and gained his Associateship (ARPS) in 1964 and, 5 years later, his Fellowship (FRPS). He has written numerous articles on photography for various magazines. He wrote his first book on photography entitled "The Complete Photographer" published by Tropical Press in 1977.

Bing Fai spends his retirement travelling, photographing and lecturing to various groups of people including photographic societies and camera clubs. In 1986, he was appointed the Overseas Service Representative in Malaysia for the Royal Photographic Society. He has won numerous prizes and awards in photography and has held three one-man photo exhibitions.

Of his passion, Bing Fai, who describes himself as a photographer/artist, says: "I am essentially a very quiet and unobtrusive photographer who operates best in a deserted village or in a quiet country lane. My choice of subject matter is dependent on my mood, feelings and vision. Therefore, anything can be my photographic subject. I am always looking for subject matter which is filled with beauty, irony and meaning, to express my feelings and at times to allow my imagination to generate fantasies.

"Whether one is making images, poetry or music - one should be enraptured by that experience itself in its wholeness. The line between oneself and the experience should not be so distinct and when the boundary is dissolved, one can get connected, that is, become part of that landscape as well. Only when one makes visible that quality in one's images can one succeed in transmitting the essential spirit of the thing or place because one has captured its soul.

"Seeing what I like enables me to go on a journey of discovery. I want to discover things and not to manipulate them. No other art reproduces life as we find it except photography. Therefore there is no reason not to use the world as raw material to make interpretative images that convey one's own personal reactions to a thing or place. I often choose to get lost in order to discover the sheer magic of rainbows."

"Some people take photos to cari makan," says Bing Fai, "I don't. As the artist paints with brush and paint, the photographer paints with light. You need to have the seeing eye". In Bing Fai's synthesis of a picture there are four elements. The first is the subject's visual stimulus which may be through its colour, form, texture, movement, chiaroscuro or symbolism. How the photographer perceives and responds to the picture - at the intellectual, emotional, visual, graphic or even literary level - is the next element. The third is that of conceptive construction and how the photographer is going to execute it through imaginative control, technical execution, or perceptive rendition to achieve the finished product. The final element is the effect of the picture; the photographic image should impart information to the viewer or evoke interesting moods, stimulate feelings, or even stir emotions - either positive or negative.

The elements of Yin and Yang figure prominently in his visuals, manifesting variously as light and shade, life and death, positive and negative, strong and weak. "See that picture I took in Egypt," Bing Fai points to the wall, "a thoroughly modern car against an ancient pyramid - modern and ancient". Pulling out a photo of a Buddhist priest releasing a pigeon, he says, "This one shows co-existence - peace and power. The pigeon, like its cousin the dove, represents peace. The man, by virtue of his high position, power". Another picture shows a beggar sitting at a doorway under two Chinese characters that say "Chang Zhuan, forever changing". "This man could have been a rich man once, now he is a pauper. Then again, he may one day be rich again." Yin and Yang in action.

One can also create a picture in response to an event. In 1972, amidst global excitement over President Richard Nixon's unprecedented meeting with Mao ZeDong in China, Bing Fai chanced on a flock of crows fluttering around a lamp post in Bangsar. His high contrast rendition, entitled Summit Meeting, of the birds silhouetted against the sky made out as if the birds, too, were emulating their human counterparts by holding their own "high-level" meeting.

The portfolio of Bing Fai's art - light-drawn art - reveals the extraordinarily sensitive interpretation of the world by the artist and his "seeing eye". Everyday objects and situations take on different perspectives through his mental lens as well as his glass lens. Here, the rusting carcass of a car juxtaposed against a leafless skeletal tree portends The Inevitable Hour, a title borrowed from Grey's Elegy that Bing Fai memorized in his VI days. There, two decaying chairs, in a work entitled Peacock Throne, which, if they could speak, could boast that once a groom, a raja sehari, did sit on them. Over there, a cross-like structure silhouetted against a grey sky filled with churning diaphanous clouds through which stab two luminescent rays, forming an inverted V. An ethereal composition, if ever there was one, entitled Let There be Light, evocative of the earth's creation or Mount Ararat where Noah made landfall.

So long as there is interplay of light and shadow, or social commentary to be made, of order and form and aesthetics to be teased from the mundane and the chaotic, Chan Bing Fai, his Nikon and his own seeing eye will be there to record it.

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