Michael Chia was born in the city-state of Singapore and moved to Belgium in the late 80’s. He currently reside in the beautiful city of Brussels that he now call his home base.

As a child he wanted to be an astronaut. His adventure into photography began when he permanently borrowed, a simple Kodak point and shoot camera from his mother when he was about eleven. During the nights, he would point it to space and photographed the stars. He was disappointed with the results. They were obviously underexposed. Later he would realise that the camera does not capture what the eye sees. Then on to discover that it could freeze a moment in space, in time. And his first steps into realising that imagination could be captured with the art of photography.

Growing up within harsh realities, his dream of putting on a spacesuit faded but his passion for photography remained. While climbing up the corporate ladder in the airline business, he was feeling burned out towards the end. Then photography found him again. Took the plunge. Left his career and live him chosen life as a free-lance photographer.

If his photography needs a category, in a general term it would be travel photography and the use of available light techniques. Not the usual ‘beautiful and bright images’ of exotic destinations. Instead, he focus on the social aspects of the destination and its people. Mixing documentary photography with abstract to create an image. For him, the challenge is to capture all his emotions and imagination, putting them onto a two-dimension piece of paper that could speak without speech. Although Michael Chia works with digital nowadays, his favourite medium remains the traditional manual camera loaded with a roll of black and white film.

In between his exhibitions, organising English photography workshops in Brussels and taking on the photography assignments that come along, he still travels extensively searching out places and images that call out to him to be photographed. His other interests include music, writing, the odd pub-crawl, scuba diving, karate and daydreaming.

Klauss van Damme 2007
independent new art curator
klauss.salalaiart@gmail.com