A short review by Christie Yung Hei Chan
There’s something about analogue photography that evokes a sense of nostalgia, be it its unique colours, its format or the image it contains. Nostalgia is a powerful feeling.
Jo Howell’s ‘Instax Haiku’ series is currently on display in Our Fragile Coexistence, a recent exhibition curated by Art Matters Now.
Given its medium, Jo’s ‘Instax Haiku’ series has an inherent nostalgic aesthetic to it. But it is also interesting how such nostalgia is juxtaposed with recently-captured moments, as if these moments are recounted, in hindsight, at some point in the future distant from now.
This series almost seems to me like a revelation that will hit us in the future—a retrospection about what we did to the environment and how it has led to the life we will lead in the years to come.
Paired with haiku, Jo’s photographic images are given a new layer of narrative and personal value, prompting viewers to make connections between text and image—to look beyond the small moments captured in an Instax film and see a bigger picture of the environmental issues in the city’s wider neighbourhood. The brevity of haiku poems harmonises with the wallet-sized form of the everyday snapshots. Yet, the questions asked in the work are big questions.
It is these contrasting elements that draw me to Jo’s work.
Edited by Christie Chan 陳雍希