04/29/2015
HAN MEDIA LAUNCHES WITH PHOTO EXHIBITION AT AGORA GALLERY
This Friday, the staff at Agora Gallery was excited to host the launch event for HAN Media, a communications agency which aims to help Chinese companies in the U.S. with media and public relation services, and to connect U.S. companies with their Chinese counterparts. The launch event, a photography exhibition entitled Chinese Dream Blossoms in America featured three emerging photographers from China.
If you follow our Periscope account, you’ll have caught some as-it-happens footage from the event, including interviews by our social media coordinator, Chiara, with some of the artists and guests.
About the Artists
Michael Shi: A Chinese photographer based in New York, Michael Shi took up photography at an early age but only as a hobby for 15 years, until he quit his professional marketing job at a Fortune 500 company. In 2009, he started his own studio in Shanghai and later worked as the Art Director for an Alibaba-invested E-commerce company. Some of his clients included Nike, Nine West, and Levis.
Michael holds a Masters of Statistics and an MBA. His academic background and business vision greatly add to his expertise in lighting techniques and have cultivated his abilities to manage any art projects. These diverse experiences, along with twenty years of working within every aspect of photography (portrait, landscape, fashion, commercial, product, dance, and street), have helped to shape his visual style.
Michael’s work demonstrates a clean, colorful, character-driven narrative. His new project, Colors of Dance, has received critical acclaim from within both the dance and photography world. He has won numerous international awards and exhibited his work in Philadelphia and New York.
Haiyin Lin: Born in a tranquil city in southeastern China, Haiyin Lin was trained to be a national champion violinist in her childhood. Having been the first chair violin in Fudan University Orchestra for four years, she then went to Columbia University for a Master’s Degree in Economics and Education.
Haiyin first began to learn photography in 2012 during her studies at Columbia University and became fascinated with it. Upon graduation in 2013, she made the decision to start working as a professional photographer and founded Haiyin Lin Studio.
My work is inspired by different type of beauties, of girls (…) This artwork has a very interesting story. This girls’s father went to a psychic, and the psychic told him that in the next life he will be a bird. So the girl, his daughter, decided to tattoo on her back the bird, and a tree to support the father in his next life.
As an up-and-coming photographer, Haiyin quickly got noticed in the industry as a result of her natural talents. Her works have been featured in many magazines, including some top-tier publications such as Vogue, ELLE, and National Geographic, among others. Her style has an elegant and classic feel with a touch of softness.
Liming Guan is a veteran newspaper reporter and photographer with extensive experiences in Shanghai, Beijing, Philadelphia and New York. He started at the official China Daily in Beijing and then as a financial news writer for Bridge Information Systems (now part of Reuters). He took up photography seriously while attending journalism school in Philadelphia and working as a photo lab instructor. He has since then built an extensive portfolio in a wide range of subjects.
Guan currently works for the China Press in New York. His works also appeared in the South China Morning Post, The New York Times, DNAinfo, Random House Living Languages book series, and Conde Nast, among others. He went to college at Shanghai International Studies University where he studied English Literature, and earned his graduate degrees at Temple University in Journalism and Columbia University in History.
The event was a great success, with both Chinese and U.S. media present. Agora Gallery @Guan Liming @Michael Shi @Haiyin Lin