Tristan Cai, Singapore
Beautifully Rich

One day we will laugh about all we have lost. One day I will be the sand on the beach. One day...
-- adapted from “STAR, Calendar girls”

Beautifully Rich is a rhetorical response to the pervasive materialistic culture that we are increasingly witnessing in urban societies today. The chase after the wind and the pursuit of wealth and vanity pervades the minds of many. As the advertising media propagates, these ideals become moulded to be the archetypes of the successful. Re-utilising the sleek and perfect imagery of advertising photography I attempt to offer a perspective of transience and immateriality of these ideals, simultaneously reconsidering the representation of photographic truth in advertising photography.

Beyond material goods, intangible ideals of vanity, wisdom and pleasure never cease to create its own cult of followers. The ascribed value of any of such pursuit follows a personal vision. Differing from one man to another, it is being shaped experientially according to our own values. This may inevitably determine one’s bondage to or freedom from these desires.