Glimpses of a Changing Nation

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 (1924-1988) was a passionate and talented photographer who 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 immediate environs. Today, his photographs of the Singapore River, Chinatown, the OCBC Centre, Sungei Road Market, Samsui Women, and more, provide us with a precious record of the fruits and price of modernisation. The photographs included in this book were carefully curated from the Kouo Shang-Wei Collection in the National Library, Singapore, by art historian, Zhuang Wubin.

Zhuang Wubin is a writer, curator and artist with a particular focus on photographic practice in Southeast Asia. Zhuang is an editorial board member of ‘Trans-Asia Photography Review’ and the contributing curator of the biennial Chiang Mai Photo Festival (2015, 2017). Shifting Currents: Glimpses of a Changing Nation is Zhuang’s fifth book, following Photography in Southeast Asia: A Survey (2016).