ha, you've got the professional eye for this stuff... for me (layman) it was just amazing that one man had taken the time and had the presence of mind to collect Polaroid photos of that many 'stars' over the span of a years... its almost more a testament to Wing's prolific career than about the actual artistry of any of the photos...

I don't live in Hong Kong, so I didn't get to see the exhibit, but from the little I've seen of Wing Shya's work, I get a sense of what the exhibit must have been like, especially your description of the "snapshot" portion. Wing has posted what I would call "snapshots" here on AnD and they present an enormous contrast with some of his work which is very staged and manipulated in post production (his Wong Kar Wai photo stills, for example). At first I wasn't sure what to make of these "snapshots". I think that definitely is the correct terminology. He seems to stop and take a picture of anything that attracts his attention in going about his daily life. At first glance, I wasn't too taken with his photographs of moths around fluorescent lights in some sort of tunnel or walkway that was posted recently. But I kept coming back to this one photo that had some very interesting formal qualities of light and dark. At that moment, I got a glimpse of how at one artist works--take pictures of anything that catches your eye, even if you're not exactly sure why. Maybe, somewhere in all those snapshots, you will capture what it was that attracted your eye in the first place. That showed me one use of the snapshot. It seems that the pictures of the bands and musicians in the Diesel exhibit was another variation on this theme--only featuring people going about their daily life as the subject, in some ways a lot richer source material, but one also fraught with a lot more variability the photographer can't control. Wing's work is so varied, as if the photographer is never satisfied with a pat idea of what photography is and will be in the future. He keeps searching out new ways of looking, always open to discovering something new about the art of making images. In many ways, Wing is sharing his private journals with us, showing us not only the glossy finished products, but also a lot about the working process of this photographer and what goes into not only the photographs that we see, but the continuing evolution of the photographer himself as an artist. For someone who on the one hand has such a grasp of the formal elements of photography, and can and does use them when the subject matter (or contract) dictates, it is clear that he is never satisfied only with this. His continual search for what is just beyond the boundaries of what consensus says is photography is very refreshing. That he feels strong enough as an artist and as an individual to share all those things that don't sit easily next to his highly polished commercial work is a testament to his commitment to his art. While I don't like everything he does, I am beginning to see that it is all part of a much larger process that in the end will inform his future work in ways I cannot begin to predict.