Ian Teh’s Undercurrents
When documentary photography enters the jurisdictions of fine art, composition, color and mood become far more crucial than gaining access to the faces and landscapes pertinent to current events. British photojournalist Ian Teh's current exhibition, Undercurrents, recognizes both the artistic and social dimensions of his documentary work.

Undercurrents includes two of Teh’s China projects. The first, Dark Clouds, focuses on laborers in China’s steel plants and coal mines. The landscape’s stark, monochromatic palette landscape seeps into his subjects’ lives. A photograph of a coal plant in Datong hangs like a back tapestry; only under close inspection does one identify the faces of men smothered in carbon black dust leading donkeys through a maze of coal.

The exhibition’s second series, Merging Boundaries, explores the day-to-day culture along China’s northeast borders with Russia and North Korea. Here, the cold blue skies, silent sands and forlorn faces of the North Korean border show the wear of the spate of famine. Along the Russian border, in cities like Suifenhe, Russians drink awash in the neon lights of the bar while KTV hostesses play cards on the couches of dimly lit red rooms. In other photos, Teh fills his frame with the saturated colors of a Russian prostitute’s make-up.

While many of Teh's photographs succeed on an artistic level, the body of work is strongest as a document. The weaker pieces in the Merging Boundaries series might suggest Teh has labored over selecting frames rather than developing the artistic merits of his photography. For audiences interested in the social realities of contemporary China, however, Undercurrents presents an intensely compelling body of work.

Blake Stone-Banks