The exhibition was up the stairs at Kino Oko in Prague 7, and the title Praha Erotica was oddly the most shocking thing about it.
The photographs were, true enough, pictures from the pornographic movie sets in Prague, but, rather than scenes of lust or pleasure, they seemed to portray fatigue or another day at the office. There were 12 of them displayed on some sort of canvas backing sans frame - all of them graphic, but none particularly attractive.
"I could easily make something more provocative or spicy," says photographer Simon Chang [pictured]. "It is not a pleasant experience to be so close. But those people are interesting."
Chang says he used about 70 rolls of film to produce the 12 pictures on display, which will be shown until the end of February.
How does one get into photographing porn movie sets?
"I was just kind of chatting with my friends, and I had connections with a producer," Chang said, adding that he thought the subject matter had continuity with his previous project: photographing people at a mental hospital. Several photos from this previous collection were also on display, framed, with short prose poems written on the matting.
Upstairs by the photos, people smoked and drank free wine - which I only know of based on the empty purple-stained pitchers - before eventually moving downstairs to the lobby area bar. Some guy was eating a bowl full of olives. There were no porn stars to be found, but plenty of good-looking women.
What did people think of the exhibit?
"He must have more pictures," said one observer. "I wish that he put up more of them."
Chang says that displaying the photos serves as a means for him to listen, to "digest the feedback and go back to shooting."
What sort of feedback did he get on this particular evening?
"People preferred the other series," he said. "But the porn one is not yet finished."
Chang says he hopes to add video interviews to the set of photographs, to try and make it a "multimedia thing."
"Following their family life, that is the next step," he said. "It's a more personal approach."
He is also taking his project to a Smíchov swingers club called Big Sister, to which people go with their significant others, enjoy a few cocktails and then engage in partner swapping, all of which is, conveniently enough, broadcast on the Internet.
"It is kind of porn, but amateur porn," he said. "A guy came up to me and was telling me about how he recently became a grandpa."
A six-year resident of Prague, Chang, 30, attended FAMU and is finishing up a master's thesis. He has shown photos in his hometown of Taipei, Taiwan. "I want to share my experiences," he said.
More recently, his work was at the Žižkov Photo Festival this past fall, with six pictures hanging in Bukowski's cocktail bar.
Where would he like to exhibit his photos next?
"Someplace French." Of course.
"Prague is a place I consider my home," he adds. "As far as living in Prague and being from somewhere else, I think it is an advantage; I bring another point of view."
And Chang is quick to characterize himself as hard-core in at least one way, and it is hard to disagree.
"I go with the hard-core, black-and-white film," he says.
