Book
Shifting Currents: Glimpses of a Changing Nation: Photographs by Kouo Shang-Wei
Topics
Arts
27 May 2018
These photographs from the 1950s to 1980s of a rapidly changing Singapore provide a record of that period and the price of modernisation.
Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions and National Library Board Singapore, 2018.
About the Book
Shifting Currents: Glimpses of a Changing Nation is the first book to present a significant collection of Kouo Shang-Wei’s most arresting images from his lifetime of photography. Kouo Shang-Wei (1924–88) was particularly attuned to the passing of time. Over several decades spanning the 1950s to the late 1980s, Kouo’s keen eye captured thousands of images of a rapidly changing Singapore, with his viewfinder most often focusing on the evolution of the Singapore River and its environs. His photographs today provide us with a precious record of that period and the price of modernisation. The images in this book were carefully curated from the Kouo Shang-Wei Collection in the National Library, Singapore, by art historian Zhuang Wubin.