"Swimming in Summer" was made in 1992 as part of a larger series of photo montages, while Chow Chee Yong was studying at Western Michigan University. They first showed in an exhibition in Michigan and were subsequently published in Photo Asia magazine in Singapore in 1996. The entire series was later published in the artist’s first photobook, ‘30th Feb’, in 2008, launched at a solo exhibition at Kay Ngee Tan Architects Gallery. This series presents the earliest examples of work by a Singaporean photographer that consciously addresses the idea of a mediated reality in photography.These prints were made through a laborious darkroom process in the pre-Photoshop era, combining multiple images and manually blending the edges. It is particularly important as a precursor to the type of work younger photographers such as John Clang and Robert Zhao are making today. Many of the works in this series highlight the contrast between nature and architecture and feature water, windows and doorways.
