Revisiting exhibition in art book

PHOTOGRAPHER Ang Song Nian's exhibition at Deck might have ended, but you can still see his photographs, or revisit them, in the form of an art book.

This art book, his first, is produced as part of the exhibition Hanging Heavy on My Eyes, which explored the recurring haze experienced in Singapore. In 2016, the artist recorded the highest and lowest local Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) readings at noon daily and translated the data into corresponding exposure timings on the enlarger in a traditional darkroom.

A total of 365 silver gelatin prints were made in this series from data and information provided by the National Environmental Agency. The work has a personal urgency to it. "Because I've had retinal detachment surgery before, when the haze came back, I got into panic mode because something had come into the landscape, and although it's external, it had to do with my vision," he recalls. "It was an issue of pollution but also visibility and invisibility."