Solace, Wing Shya, 2024

Wing Shya is a photographer working in Hong Kong who has worked extensively with film director Wong Kar Wei. His most iconic images were often shot on film, and experimented with analog processes including light leaks and cross-processing positive slide film using negative chemistry to achieve vibrant, raw color with high contrast and texture in his images.

For the Solace, Shya first handed over an archive of of thousands of images spanning decades of work. The images span work for the film industry, fashion images for i-D magazine and other publications, behind the scenes photography with Cantopop starts from advertising shoots and travel, and snapshots from Hong Kong raves in the 1990s. The edit was then sequenced as a series of formal diptychs paired through formal relationships, placed either side by side, or one after another, from beginning to end.

Working together with lithographer Sebastiaan Hanekroot, he developed a custom color separation that captured the vibrant color range of Shya’s experiments with analog processes using a combination of five colors including CMY, PMS 477, and skeleton black.

Two interior sections of the book are silkscreened on a thick uncoated paper stock, and text and image content is mirrored on the verso side of every page. For the cover, a custom red silkscreen ink was made by combining a fluorescent red with warm red ink, creating a vibrant, fluorescent red that references hues from his images.