203Thflfi0: 19373 1fl9Photogr aphy as a first love
Citing her influences as renowned photographers
August Sander, Edward S. Curtis and Diane Arbus,
Diana’s first brush with photography happened in a
dark room at the age of 15.
“The summer before high school began, I discovered
dark room printing for the first time,” Diana recalls of
her teenage years growing up in Los Angeles. “That was
where I tasted my first love in photography, and in high
school I was elected to be secretary of publicity and
also did some photography.”
But it wasn’t until Diana was 19 during a trip back
to her grandmother’s hometown in Muar, Johor that
reignited her love for film.
“In my grandmother’s house I discovered these black
and white photographs of our family that she had cut
out and placed under the coffee table glass,” she says.
“I used to imagine stories about these people and
wondered who they were. They helped me to go back
to a past that could only be retrieved through photos.
That was how I developed my love for photography,”
she says, leading her to minor in Photography at the Art
Center College of Design in Pasadena.
“It’s a huge responsibility to be an artist,” she
muses, as she tells me about her dream project to
achieve self-realisation and to begin that revolution
within her. “Photography is my way of questioning the
world and the system that we live in. We are the voice
of the unconscious.” ag
These modern-day portraits
of Malaysian women defy the
simplistic racial classification
of citizens into Malay, Chinese,
Indian or Other“Malaysia is going through a political crisis at the
moment, and this project is as much an ethnographic
as it is an anthropological study,” she explains.
“Shooting this series, I realised how mixed we all are
and that there no longer is a ‘pure race’ in today’s
world. I would definitely describe TOTEM as a piece
of subversive work.”
DIANA LUI is a Paris-based photographer from Malaysia, most
well-known for her large intimate portraits taken on her 8x10
view camera. She is the winner of France’s 20th Bourse du Talent
and the Kodak Critics’ Award in 2003. http://www.99medusas.com