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Russel Kwan and Wendy Kwan Black and White Photography,
and Fine Art Photography,
black and white prints, b&w prints
b&w photographs, b&w photography
are based in Vancouver British Columbia BC Canada.
We make Handbound Books, Silver Gelatin Prints, our Blog,
Chasing Light Stranger, we are Px3 Prix de la Photographie Paris 2007 Winners,
Pilsner Urquell International Photography Awards IPA 2008 Winners.
Alternate addresses for this website: RusselKwan.com, WendyKwan.com
Current features on our website: New Work 2009, Hard of Housing, Time's Arrow
Also featured on this website: our darkroom tour, hyper macro, black and white photography processes,
experimental photography.
Russel Kwan is also known as Russ Kwan, Russell Kwan.

"Ephe", Wendy Kwan, 11x14", edition of 6

"The Sun Travels the Sky", Russel Kwan, 11x14", edition of 9

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Film Based Black and White Photographs * Silver Gelatin Black and White Prints * Handbound Books *
Courses and Workshops * Experimental and Traditional Black and White Photography

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June 2009

Hi!

Thanks for visiting!

Wendy and Russ are in the process of setting up a micro-school program designed to awaken, inspire and extend our students' photographic creativity and help them develop their photography as art. This program is an extension of programs Russ and Wendy have led in diploma programs in Vancouver's photography schools. Our goal for this course is to deliver instruction and mentoring to very small groups (6-8 people), an instructor/student ratio impossible for institutions, but one we feel is optimal for this kind of learning. The first classes will start in October 2009. Click here for our courses and workshops page for more information.

Click here for lots more news and reports on our photography jury activities, installation pictures of the Luminatii show, and upcoming events.

Russ' photograph "Spires" on the spring 2009 cover of "Spiritus", a theology journal of the Johns Hopkins University.

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April 2009

Hi!

There's lots going on in the next while... and lots of additions to our website in the past few weeks, so please enjoy!

Our Vancouver photographic group, Luminatii, will be presenting its first exhibition in May 2009. Luminatii is a diverse group of professional fine art photographers, each exploring the photographic medium and the world around them in their own unique way. Both black and white photography and colour photography is represented in this show. The great strength of this group lies in its diversity - in approaches, subjects, media, prints - everyone has a unique point of view. Wendy and Russ will be showing some of their latest dual toned fiber based silver gelatin prints, available only in limited editions.

Brian and Russ were interviewed on the Global TV Morning News 20 April 2009 to talk about Luminatii. The clip is available on our News Page if you want to see it!

Click here for our comprehensive News Page with current exhibitions, guest lectures, and more.

Luminatii Show
Russ and Wendy Artist Talks
Sunday May 10, 2009 at 3pm
Wendy: Exploring the Abstract
Russ: Experimental Photography

There's plenty of new work on the website: in the New Work 2009 section, there are fresh images from Russel's experimental work in extreme over exposure and very long exposure - resulting in images of the sun's path across the sky - captured on black and white film and traditionally printed on silver gelatin. Russ has invented a new chemistry to process the extremely over exposed film to make these unique images.

Wendy has a new series, "Southern Spirit", capturing the gentle flavour and majesty of the American Deep South. These images were made on our long roadtrip through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the Florida panhandle in 2007, and some of the images were captured on some of our last stocks of discontinued Kodak HIE, a particularly beautiful black and white infrared film.

Wendy is also in the process of printing some of her infrared photographs made in the Australian outback in 2001. On that trip, we rented a 4x4 truck, and spent six weeks driving the back blocks from Darwin to Perth. That part of the world is one of the last remaining true wildernesses on our planet - there are almost no people out there. A few times we crossed 800 kms between petrol stations. The landscape is harsh, unforgiving, and breathtaking - and Wendy has done a phenomenal job in capturing it on Kodak HIE infrared film.

Russel has started printing his series made during the pre-Christmas snowstorms on Salt Spring Island, and the first few pictures are now in the New Work 2009 section.

Wendy and Russel have both been photographing and documenting the abandonment of Little Mountain Public Housing in their new series "Hard of Housing". Little Mountain is a place where Vancouver has had subsidized public housing since 1946. The site has been put up for redevelopment, and the families living there have been gradually moved out, leaving a semi-ghost town in the middle of one of Canada's major cities. Wendy and Russ have explored this gradual abandonment in a variety of photographic media across a few months, resulting in a dramatic set of pictures that not only documents this unique place, but captures some of the flavour of the abandonment, desolation and sorrow of the departing and departed. This work is still in progress, and we expect to add photographs consistently over the next few months.

There are also fresh articles (by Russel) in the "Writings" section detailing how to homemake a 4x5 pinhole camera, the Drãnoflex. There's also instructions for altering a Holga camera to make slit scan pictures. And lots of other odds 'n ends from the depths of photography.

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January 2009

Our recently renovated website features black and white film-based and darkroom-printed photography shot in our studio and around the world.  We work exclusively in film, using a variety of equipment from small format to medium format to large format, and we especially have fun with toy (Holga) and vintage (Ikonta) cameras.

Our award-winning (Prix de la Photographie Paris, 2007) book, “Chasing Light Stranger” is a study in contrast in some of the disappearing cultures around the Pacific Rim, including Cambodia, Thailand, Japan, Australia and the American West.

Our award winning (International Photography Awards, 2008) exhibition, “Vanishing Silver”, is a composite story of abandoned silver mines in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming, presented in the also vanishing medium of silver gelatin printmaking.

Other works on our website include: abstract photographs of sand formations found on the Oregon coast, experimental one-of-a-kind photographs of a 19^th century botanical herb collection from Paris, a study of Vancouver’s decommissioned and now rusting fleet of electric trolley buses from the 1940’s, photographs of the people and birds of the Greyhaven Exotic Bird Sanctuary, pictures of miniature architectural constructions, photographs of the moss-laden trees of Georgia, pictures of Amarillo’s Cadillac Ranch, scenes from Salt Spring Island, abstract photographs of ice and frost,  and experimental photography based on homebrew chemistry and homemade cameras.

Almost all of the photographs on this website are available for sale and in many forms: as original, photographer produced analog limited edition fiber-based silver-gelatin prints, as professionally reproduced digital c-prints, and as licensed images for (almost) unlimited use as specialized stock photography. Our original prints are in public and private collections in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Asia, Australia and Europe. Ordering photographs is simple! Just click the "order" link found next to practically every image, and fill in the order form.

You will also find current news, an extensive blog of published reviews, technical information, descriptions of many of the oddball photographic techniques we are exploring, and day-by-day roadtrip logs from 2007 and 2008.

We are in the process of rolling out an interactive forum for questions and answers to all things photographic.  Also, please have a look at our current workshop offerings.  We are happy to help you in your photographic endeavours in any way we can.

Click here to enter Russel Kwan and Wendy Kwan
Fine Art Black and White Photography
(aka RusselKwan.com and WendyKwan.com)