| Almond CHU | |
| Birth Date: | 1962 |
| Birth Place: | Hong Kong, China |
| Website: | http://www.almondchu.com/ |
| Known For: | Fine art photography |
Almond CHU (Chinese 朱德華) (born 1962 in Hong Kong, China) is a Hong Kong-based artist and photographer, known for his black and white photographs and large format conceptual color images.
Almond Chu was the eldest son of his family. When he was a kid, he received a camera as gift from his father and it explored his vision through the lens. Almond found his interest in visual arts when he was a teenager. He started his studies on oil painting but gave up finally when he discovered that he just learned a western technique without any spiritual enrichment.
In 1983, he went to Tokyo and continued his studies in fine-art photography at the Tokyo College of Photography. The most influential person for him was his Japanese teacher Iizawa Kôrarô, who is recognized as a leading expert among Japanese photography critics. His studies and the living style there not only fulfilled his persuasion of artistic nourishment, but also led him to practice the spirit of ‘simplicity’.
In 1993, he was awarded Agfa Fellowship Young Photographer Award by Asian Culture Council and stayed in New York. At the same year, he set up his own studio in Hong Kong and started his work on art and commercial projects.
He has been invited to exhibit his work in various countries such as Germany, Italy, Denmark, Canada, Russia, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand. Besides, his work has been featured in numerous international publications.In 2004, he was invited to be one of the prominent speakers of the Internationally Literary and Aesthetic Symposium organized by Bonn University and the Art & Exhibition Hall of Deutschland, Germany. In 2005, he founded the art photography organization pH5 Photo Group which focused in promoting art photography in Hong Kong. In 2007, he founded the art photography magazine pHi and was appointed as the editor-in-chief.
In addition to fine art photography, Almond is also a curator. In 2011, he was invited to be one of the major curators for the large-scale photo exhibition titled “Different Dimension - the International Festival of contemporary photography” at Novosibirsk State Art Museum in Russia.
Before the end of 2000, Almond was known by his black and white photographs and his dark room technique. In the years after, he started his conceptual series Parade and adapted digital technique to edit and enhance his work so as to achieve the surreal phenomenon.The series stages imaginary parades, formed in fact of repetitions of a single individual, always taking place in historically and socially symbolical places, such as the government offices or the Apple store. Since 1997, Almond Chu had developed this series and his gallerist in Hong-Kong La Galerie encouraged him to continue this historical and existential work of testimony.