* DESIGNER OF
THE YEAR 2010

John Clang

Photographic Director
Clang Photography, Inc

At the age of 15, John Clang knew with absolute certainty that he wanted to be a photographer. The desire was so strong, he says, “I decided to quit art school because the photography programme was too basic.” He went on to become an assistant to Cultural Medallion recipient Chua Soo Bin and threw himself into learning the craft.

Mr Clang has come a long way since then. Acclaimed internationally for his commercial work, his client list includes notable names such as Godiva, Hermès, IBM, Levi’s, Nike and Timberland. Personally, he is also celebrated for his art: he has held solo exhibitions in Singapore, Los Angeles, New York and Paris, as well as appeared in group exhibitions in Milan, Brooklyn and London.

Mr Clang’s design philosophy is based on the quest to

“create a timeless piece that will resonate with others and myself, a creation that will give me the adrenaline rush from conception and production to completion”.

His success, he says, is due to “the strong urge to create something that will actually inspire me. This then continues to fuel my passion and results in more original creations.”

In his work, Mr Clang focuses on the artistic process as much as on the end image. He says, “It makes one curious about the thinking process and the work method. It gets one involved simply by engaging them. My works raise questions rather than provide answers. My aim is to provoke a thought and have the individual reflect on it in his personal context.”

Although his work has been well received over the years, Mr Clang is very critical of his own work, and he embraces some of what he sees as his own failed work in order to learn from it. He says, “It is the constant self-confrontation that continues to challenge me. I think my ability to have an in-depth conversation with myself about my own work sets me apart from other creatives.” He notes wryly, “I sure don’t make my creative journey an easy one!”

Reflecting on his achievements, Mr Clang describes the Hermès and Levi’s global advertising campaigns that he worked on early in his career as turning points for him. Both were inspired by personal projects and convinced him that “I was right to stay true to my vision and create work that would inspire others and myself. I don’t create work for the sake of increasing my commercial viability. This understanding of my work practice was so important that I considered it a breakthrough.”

This belief remains a firm conviction and has marked his work ever since. He acknowledges that this uncompromising approach is unconventional. As much as a client might demand of him, he is constantly exploring boundaries in his work and demands of the client an equal measure of faith in his abilities and his work. He says, “I’m always trying something new, lending the campaign a fresh look. My clients have to see that sensibility in my work and have faith in me. It’s not something that I can just show them specifically from my current portfolio.”

He believes that such a partnership with a client can have an immense creative payoff. “When we work on projects together, we have a great time collaborating and exploring. Most of my best clients fit this mould; they’re brave and want to push the envelope. The fact that they are willing to work with me already shows their desire for us to break new ground together.”

In the local context, Mr Clang sees the creative scene in Singapore as being vibrant. He says, “We have many new local talents now who have a voice and identity of their own. They are confident about their direction and their creations. If this continues, we will be able to have a distinctive voice in the global creative community. Creatives like myself and several others who work outside Singapore play an important role in showing the world Singapore’s creative strength. The gap is definitely narrowing.”

As the first Singaporean photographer to have received international attention and to be represented alongside photography luminaries such as Annie Leibovitz, Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Steven Meisel, he is regarded as a trailblazer and a role model. He acknowledges that “it gives hope to the younger generation. They now know that it is possible.”

He is active in encouraging emerging Singapore photographers in their pursuit of the craft. Besides running workshops for young photographers and students during his 2004 “Self Portrait” exhibition and, more recently, the 2010 “(Con)Front” exhibition, he hopes to “inspire young creatives to be in tune with their mind and their lives and not just be influenced by what they see in others’ work”.

READ MORE

ON PEDDER

New York, 2007
Pedderzine No. 3: Super Natural
Spring/Summer 2008 issue
(Photo by: Clang)

BEING TOGETHER

New York / Singapore, 2010 Use of simple video conferencing in the "Seperation" series to capture his severance from the family he left in Singapore.
(Photo by: Clang)

LEVI'S

New York, 2002
Print campaign for Levi's
(Photo by: Clang)

ME AND FRIENDS

New York, 2009
Personal artwork
(Photo by: Clang)

HOPENHAGEN

New York, 2009 Print campaign to create awareness of the 2009
United Nations Climate Change Conference starting 7 December in Copenhagen.
(Image by: Ogilvy New York, USA)

GODIVA

New York, 2004
Print campaign for Godiva Chocolatier.
(Photo by: Clang)

HERMÈS

New York, 2000
Print campaign for Hermès
Spring/Summer 2001
(Photo by: Clang)

SONY

Los Angeles, 2005
Print campaign for Sony Cybershot.
(Photo by: Clang)

TAKE OFF

New York, 2001
Editorial for BlackBook Magazine
(Photo by: Clang)

OBSCURED

New York, 2000
Editorial for Rank magazine
(Photo by: Clang)

‘‘Always stay true to yourself and be original. To create is to live your life to the fullest and to be inspired by it. That’s how I think one’s work can be fresh.’’

Insights from the Recipient

What does it mean to practise as a designer in Singapore?

It means you have a much smaller audience to truly appreciate your creation. You therefore have to get their attention somehow by creating work that will impact their lives.

How has Singapore's design industry evolved over the past decade or, indeed, since you started practising?

We used to be heavily influenced by what we saw overseas. Now, we are spending more time than taking a greater effort to craft our own identity, our own style. The industry is beginning to believe in its own talents.

What is the responsibility of a designer to the community or society?

The responsibility is to create a social discourse, a dialogue for people who encounter your work. This will, in turn, help make them reflect on their roles in society.

Citation

‘‘Always stay true to yourself and be original. To create is to live your life to the fullest and to be inspired by it. That’s how I think one’s work can be fresh.’’

Jury Citation

John has the rare gift of being both a photographer who knows his art and also a successful commercial photographer in the advertising field. He balances both patience and passion in equal measure. The fact that he is colour-blind shows that one can go against the odds to excel in one’s chosen field.

As a commercial photographer, he has achieved great success in New York, arguably the harshest art and commercial capital in the world. His wellknown campaigns for Levi’s and Hermès have lifted the game significantly and continue to be enduring, relevant and fresh today. The Hermès campaign, in particular, was highly successful. John brought enormous influence from his editorial work into the campaign. The Jury feels that these shots will still be timeless in five to ten years’ time. His commercial work has helped build brands such as IBM, Sony and Godiva.

His personal work is highly evocative, exploratory and moves one to think. Having shifted from using stills to video work, he used simple video conferencing in his “Separation” series to capture his severance from the family he left in Singapore, and projected his family into his New York home. One segment in particular where he and his brother flex their muscles like schoolboys in the yard dramatised his personal loss and technology’s inability to bridge the gap as completely as a hug from a brother.

In another work, he photographed a friend who is a cobbler and passed it off as a self-portrait, so that his friend is now better known in Singapore than he is. This “self-portrait” demonstrates his ability to laugh at himself, a rare gift in this landscape of the rockstar creative.

John’s work is exceptional. We applaud his courage to experiment and his relentless search for a different point of view. As Designer of the Year, he will be a worthy ambassador for Singapore.

VIEW JURORS

Nominator Citation

MR THESEUS CHAN
EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
WORK ADVERTISING, SINGAPORE

John Clang can be described simply as a Singaporean made good in the US and internationally. But to do so would be as simplistic as the view of local photography in 1999, when he moved to the US to pursue a career in conceptual photography, a then unexplored and abstract concept.

A visionary in his own right, Clang expressed his artistic beliefs to me when we met many years back. “I’m into the celebration of living. Being able to live in this world, experiencing it in various stages, means a lot to me. I try to understand myself everyday, understanding my own existence in this world, understanding my mind and passion.”

He explains further, “Photography allows me to record my experiences and thinking in various stages of my life. Through my photographs, I see my mental growth and I bring my physical self closer to my soul. So, it is important I produce work that continuously inspires me.”

Based on this, I believe that he is not just an artistic export from Singapore, but also a testament to success borne from daring to believe in himself and devoting his life to art.

Clang also has acute visual sense and sensibility. I recall an anecdote that he shared with me at another meeting, giving me an insight into an independent and intellectual artist. One of his projects in art school was graded an A minus. Believing that it deserved an A plus grade, Clang confronted the lecturer who had graded his work. During that encounter, the lecturer agreed to reconsider the grade and awarded his project an A plus the next day. The following day, Clang quit the school because he felt that the lecturer did not have an opinion, and since art school education was not going to guide him, he gave it a pass.

Clang has since garnered numerous accolades from American Photography, Communication Arts, PX3 – Prix de la Photographie Paris, and was one of 30 featured photographers in the Kodak Professional & PDN Gallery Emerging Artist Series 2001. His body of commercial work includes international campaigns for Godiva, Hermès, IBM, Levi’s, Nike and Timberland.

Most notably, while most clients have one layout that they want, to which they keep the final product as close as possible, Clang is always able to shoot what has been requested while bringing something different to the table each time – a respectable compromise of both business and artistic integrity, two things Clang has never been guilty of forgoing. This is something that is extremely rare in today’s competitive creative industry, something that should be commended and celebrated. After all, it is not everyday that Singapore sees an internationally recognised talent who marries his life to his work, and still calls Singapore home.

OTHER RECIPIENTS