Asian Markets

CONTEMPORARY BY ANGELA LI presents the solo exhibition of renowned photographer Peter Steinhauer, featuring his latest series of works taken throughout Asia. The large format photographs are shown with sound clips listened to via a mobile sound app downloaded onto the viewer’s own phone, for a full surround sound, Asian market appreciation.

In this exhibition, you will experience a cacophony of sounds, visuals and people…. this is the true essence of an Asian Market.

For the last year, Peter Steinhauer has been traveling to the central markets of Asia in an attempt to capture its continuously throbbing heart beat and effervescent atmospheres.

In addition to the visual aspect of these stunning photographs, Steinhauer also records the sounds of the markets, by incorporating an “app” to the overall experience. The app features richly recorded stereo sound of activities of that particular image within the markets. By downloading the app and listening to the sound while viewing the photograph, the viewer can transport themselves right into the core of the markets, feeling and sensing their harmony and excitement.

In each image, Steinhauer is showing the market from the same vantage point. With his medium format, 60 and 80 megapixel cameras, 2.5 metres off the ground, the resulting photographs give us a unique perspective to view the markets. Initially, the eye is drawn to the bottom half of the image, then later to the top half, observing the structure and architecture of the building that the market is held within.

While Asian Markets generally serve similar purposes, that is, the gathering place for trade, they are unique in the way that each are woven deep into the fabric of the cultures where they exist. For decades, or even centuries, they have been a focal point for people of villages and in cities to go for food, trade, but almost equally as important, they are a place of gathering for socialising. They are bustling and full of energy with people moving everywhere, talking, laughing and yelling prices back and forth while moving boxes and crates of food or fish. There is the ever-present

sound of knives hitting chopping blocks, cutting the meat or fish and the clanking of metal scales. The sounds of a market can be overwhelming and are part of the total experience. With the increasing development of Asia, these markets are fast disappearing. The land that they sit on is often valuable and the markets are being torn down to make way for large apartment complexes or curtain-walled buildings that will yield far more money for the city.

In this ambitious project, Steinhauer presents the essence and energy of these Asian Markets, the last bastions of Asian cultural centres.