50-Year Vision Quest: Photographs 1970-2020
- ISBN-10
- 1735680311
- ISBN-13
- 9781735680316
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2021-04-06
- Author
- John Chao
Description
A random spectator is the premise of photographer John Chao's 50-year visual celebration-the fruition of his half-century photographic odyssey. Here, photographs coalesce as revelations, inviting the viewer on a footpath which unfolds as a deliberate set of accidental impressions.Chao's uncanny vision is testimony to the cultural inheritance to which he was bequeathed. His early life passed along a trajectory that led him through the 1950s-'60s Asia, South & North America, respectively. The collision of these cultures lifted Chao's burgeoning intuition into a form of escapism and storytelling - his instrument being the camera. And surprisingly, his abounding faith in the unseen.The spontaneity of style and the radiance of discovery are gifted to the viewer who hurtles along as an unwitting companion in Chao's sojourn. While never intending an audience, Chao's visual virtuosity has long since been hidden from the world of photography. After leaving the comfort zone of success in New York City, he found himself thriving in the newfound obscurity of the west and reinvented himself as a magazine publisher and manufacturer. Chao maintained his quest and preserved decades of hidden gems in his Colombia River Gorge home. His collection of over half-a-million photographs has been distilled to 500 images spanning five decades and over 40 countries in this, his first photographic memoir.
