Starting on the magazine back in December 2009, our Hungarian photographer Nicky Almasy has captured the diversity of this ever-shifting city, from life in the old lanes to ultra-modern skyscrapers under construction. As we wish him well as he takes up a new challenge, here he talks us through some of his favorite photos from his time with us.
These are my all-time favorite photos I took for the magazine. In the winter of 2010 I went out with colleague Raemin Zhang to explore the old lanes just behind Beijing Lu for two photo essays. For the first one I was taking photos of people’s kitchens, for the second one hairdressers. Most people said no, or even chased us away, when we asked them if I could photograph them.
The old lady in the first picture was an absolute miracle. I walked through a small lane alone and when I got to this window she was wiping a table and was just there to be photographed. She even smiled when we locked eyes, as she knew what was coming. It happened in a few seconds. Only later I realized the beautiful matching green colors. Typical example of being in the right place at the right time.
This old man was a very similar situation, but we actually went inside to say hello to him. He was very sick and he couldn’t move. His wife said he was in a lot of pain. He was just sitting there in the middle of the kitchen, staring at us calmly and had no problem being photographed.
In the autumn of 2011 we ran a story about the local Shanghai dialect banned from schools around the city. The deadline was tough and I only had a few hours before going to print to express the story in an image.
I ran down to a local school around 4pm, when the kids were going home, grabbed the loudest boy out of a gang and asked him to cover his mouth. He had no idea why he was doing it, but his face and expression were just perfect.
I took this for our ‘Man on the Street’ series. I don’t think there’s much to add, it really speaks for itself.
This was my first cover with That’s so I was extremely anxious to not waste the opportunity. I just had to get it right. The first idea was that we paint a RMB100 bank note on her face, then it changed to the Yuan sign. But when that made her look like a cat, we changed to the Chinese character for money (qian 钱) on the spot.
This photo is often misinterpreted as the girl doesn’t have the perfect model face. Actually, we went just against that on purpose. It was the money divide issue and she was a shop assistant from one of our interviews, complaining about financial troubles. To paint the money character over her worried features actually made the photo, and my first cover was born.
This was never published but in my opinion it was the best photo of the session. I took it on the balcony of Bar Rouge. They asked me if I wanted to take it at night with bar lights on, but I said no because it would have just ended up being another nightclub photo. In a way I wanted to kill out any pole-dancing, nightclub-ish feeling. It was a hazy day and I used that to my advantage – a weird black and white setting for a girl dancing against the Shanghai skyline. In my interpretation it expresses the many opportunities the city has to offer.
This was taken for the cover of the ‘Taxi Issue’ in the summer of 2011 and of course portrays De Niro from Scorsese’s Taxi Driver. My editor came up with the idea and let me do the rest. I advertised for a young guy and soon got a phone call from a young Chinese lawyer. He wanted to do the shoot but was reluctant to shave his hair like this because of his job.
The day of the shoot I took him to the hairdresser Bono and he was still pleading to keep his hair. He sat down, I showed the De Niro photo and it started. He looked at me pleadingly all the way through, but I just kept repeating more and more until I got this mohawk.
He is still listed as Travis Bickle in my phone.
The Food and Drink awards cover shoots always take place in August – and invariably end up on the hottest days. This was certainly the case last year, when we were preparing for the Reservoir Dogs. I found this location in the Cool Docks where there was a long enough brick wall for the guys to walk down.
It was mind-numbing heat and it just added to the excitement when someone forgot the sunglasses at the office. The actual shoot – as with the Food and Drink covers – only took minutes, we finished relatively early. This shot wasn’t published and was taken as they walked back to change.
This was one of That’s Shanghai’s most hated covers when it came out. We did it for the hair issue in February 2011. “It grows on you”said the strapline, and I thought it was the perfect photo for my editor’s requirements: crazy hair; striking photo; very Shanghai.
It immediately split the editorial team, but in the end we published it. The reactions were catastrophic. “Where did you get the heroin addict?” asked one of the readers’comments.
The actual girl broke down in tears when she saw it. She signed up for being on the cover but I don’t think she actually knew what she was signing up for. It was a beautiful and expressive photo that really had that Shanghai style you only see in hidden lanes. One of the major flaws publishing it was that the art designer cropped in two close and it killed all the colorful details surrounding her, framing her and matching her colors.
The concept of this looked a bit difficult – to get the most famous chefs in Shanghai in one place and shoot them as Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’–but once we got the place and the light right, it all went very quickly. We chose to Mi Tierra as the location because of their beautiful wall and setting. Pity that the place is gone, but at least we have preserved it for posterity in this photo.
I think this could be my favorite and most important photo of all because it opened a lot of doors for me. It was just an outtake of a photo shoot that I later discovered could be good for something. Actually I took it on a very rainy day from the Puxi side of the river.
In December 2012 it won the ENR Best International Architectural Photo and was even used for the ceremony poster in New York (below). The Shanghai Tower’s architect, Marshall Strabala, had convinced me to enter the competition –I didn’t see much chance of winning and I was certainly shocked when I did.
I took this photo of Marshall Strabala, the chief architect of the Shanghai Tower, inside the tower last summer. We did the whole issue on the building half-completed, but this didn`t make it to the final to my regret. I first met Marshall in 2010 when we did an interview with him, then in May 2012 I started to work for him, documenting the tower going up and his work inside. In the process we became friends and still visit the tower frequently.
This was one of those rare occasions when I overslept for a photo shoot. I’d been looking forward to this for days. For some reason –not staying up late, not partying –I simply woke up at 10am when my editor called asking where I was for our 9.30am appointment: “Are you here yet? We’re at the ground floor with the SWFC manager, waiting to go up.”
I was still in my bed. I ran out to the street, got a cab and everything was jammed with traffic that morning. I was only an hour late. It was copied so many times since but this was the first occasion the media was allowed up there with the window cleaners. I couldn`t sleep for days after this –whenever I closed my eyes I saw this 100-floor abyss below me.
I discovered this with deputy editor Monica Liau on our quest completing the Hongkou issue, at the beginning of this summer. It was a huge abandoned school in the middle of an open space. We walked through the corridors and what was so astonishing about it was that all the floors were ripped out but the blackboards on the walls still had stuff written on them by the children. The chalk on the ground just added to the spookiness of the place.
0 User Comments