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Ian Teh British. Born in 1971. Lives and works in London. Ian Teh has always only seen the world in colour; one that is his alone. This is the very essence of his photography that nonetheless opposes any “realist” representation and allows him to impose his own subjective and sensitive view. His impressionistic approach allows us to discover worlds which are not mere pretexts for the creation of sumptuous images. Working on commission and publishing his own projects, he is a regular contributor to magazines and also works for corporate communications. His work deals largely with journalistic themes. Among his stories, he has originally documented a day in the City of London, his home, and analysed the weekend recreational activities at the working class resort town of Blackpool. In the cities and the countryside of China, where he has worked extensively, he has focused on a long project concerning the Three Gorge Dam. 
See the photographer's map...
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Portfolio
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Portraits
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Stories
 | Traces (2010) Traces is an epic exploration into the industrial hinterlands of China’s far flung and impoverished provinces such as Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Shaanxi; including also the country’s most polluted city, Linfen, once nicknamed in the 80s as the “Modern Fruit and Flower Town”.
The series depict scenes in the countryside, a traditionally rural landscape that in the past three decades has seen the encroachment of industrialization. Set where once farmlands grew green, these images depict the fast-breeding industry of cement, steel and coal. Rampant growth, corruption and poorly regulated laws have allowed factories to spill their untreated effluent into local streams. Over-mining has caused... |
 | The Island (2010) Great Britain refers to England, Wales and Scotland, all of which make an island that is the ninth largest in the world, and the largest in Europe.
This story, across the cities of Great Yarmouth, Clacton-on-Sea et Southend among others, is the first stage of a larger trip in the region. Its goal is to explore aspects of the nation's identity by circumnavigating the coastline of Britain, starting at Southend-on-Sea in Essex and traveling north along the coast, visiting towns and cities dotted along the sea front, all the way up to great Yarmouth in Suffolk.
Many of the places visited are well known seaside resorts. With their theme parks on the seaside, diners and retirement homes,... |
 | Neo Burlesque London (2009) Story done in collaboration with Wang Wei
It's almost midnight in Dalston - an up n'coming area of East London - and we're headed to the 'Die Freche Muse', the location for which, he 'private' Boys Club, was kept top-secret until the day of the party. A young female clown greets us with a wink and a flower as we duck under the arches of what seemingly looks to be a slightly run down Victorian building.
Stepping into the main lounge, an intimate space with possibly no more than a hundred guests, it feels as though we've pulled back a velvet curtain to reveal a scene of swinging skirt hems and wizzard-puffs of smoke from suited, shiny-shoed characters, smells of old-school cigarettes... |
 | Square Mile, London (2009) The Square Mile, otherwise known as The City, is London's business and financial centre, home to the Bank of England and the London Stock Exchange. This small patch of land, one of the richest on earth, has been shaken to its foundations by the recent global financial crises. For many years I have lived a few short miles from this place without really being aware of the impact its financial institutions have on our lives. It is a secret, hidden world that is both familiar and at the same time alien. it seems that we entrusted the running of the economy to those in authority who we believed understand the merchanisms of our financial system. The recent economic meltdown and the resulting... |
 | Return to Sichuan, China (2008) After a first trip in the devastated region of Sichuan, in May 2008, Ian Teh went back to meet survivors of the terrible earthquake. As the government help is a long time coming, and the rebuilding has just begun, Sichuan’s people regain slowly a daily life paced by the search of money and a job. But the disaster has marked each family, and its consequences are impossible to forget.
Inside refugee camps’ prefabs, erected by the state, everyone seeks a way to survive, setting small businesses up. |
 | Olympic Schools, China (2008) China is the only country in the world with academies dedicated to what most countries consider a recreation room pastime. At the Luneng Table-Tennis School in Shandong province, 230 boarding students crowd a gymnasium set up with 80 ping-pong tables. In the morning, children train for around four hours. A few hours of academic classes are held in the afternoon—more than at many other sports schools. Three times a week students also hone their table-tennis skills in the evening. The only unscheduled hours come on Sunday afternoon. Most kids only see their parents twice a year. “China’s so good at ping-pong because we train harder than anyone else,” says Xu Mengjie, a pigtailed 10-year-old... |
 | Wenchuan earthquake aftermath, China (2008) Ian Teh went on spot two days after the earthquake hit the Chinese province of Sichuan.
The quake has revealed the compassionate side of China's and put the government under unprecedented scrutiny. The inhabitants live in makeshift shelters and try to salvage a few belongings in the rubble.
An estimated 70,000 people died and 5 million were made homeless by the earthquake that measured 8 on the Richter scale.
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 | Gold mining in China (2008) China purchased 221 tons of gold in the first three quarters of last year, surpassing the U.S. to become the second largest gold consumer. (India remained far in first with 515 tons consumed).
China mines are the world deadliest, and while most of the accidents occur in coal pits, 2,188 died in gold and other metal mines last year. Till now these working conditions have largely been allowed to persist in China, where workers rights are weak and independent unions are nonexistent |
 | Transforming Beijing (2007) The Beijing skyline is going through an unprecedented change. Signs of the old being replaced by the new are visible everywhere. The transformation is not confined just to the architecture but in different aspects of the society.
Politically, culturally and economically the Chinese seem determined to grasp the opportunity presented by Beijing 2008 and ensure that, even if they do not go down as the best games in Olympic history, they will deserve to be remembered as one of the most impressive. |
 | Dark clouds, China (2006) This is a journey into some of China’s most industrialised cities, a journey to the other side of that bright shiny facade that is the economy. It is a glimpse of another life and another world that is rarely seen. |
 | Cuba, 2001 (2001) In 2001, Ian Teh produced a series on Cuba Island. Excuse to catch peerless colours, life in Havana and Santiago de Cuba displays its own particular atmosphere. Pedestrians pass here and there in the remains of a Revolution still so close but which seems yet to be from another age. |
 | The Three Gorges Dam, China (2001) China, 2001. The Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river. This project, first dreamed by Mao, is huge. 13 cities, 400 towns, 1352 villages, 30 000 hectares of agricultural land will be submerged and up to two million people displaced. But the major cause for concern is the resettlement programme and the bleak fate awaiting the two milion to be relocated. New cities are being built a few miles away from those to be inundated in 2005, but official pledges are broken one by one. |
 | The City, in London (2001) Delved in a microcosm. A world that lives and vibrates with the mood of the markets. Ian Teh, London-based photographer, makes us discover a world where everybody walks looking down, focused on the aims of the day. He photographs a world of high-tech architecture, lost in the middle of the British capital. Through his lens, blurry goers, and the vision of a stranger to the stock market bubble. |
 | Chinese borders with Korea and Russia (2001) Everyday, bus loads of Russians cross the Chinese border to visit towns such as Suifenhe in order to buy cheap Chinese goods. They are entrepreneurs, here for business and also for a good time. There are even bars catering for the Russians and Russian prostitutes. The items on the market range from textile to timber to scrap metal. However behind this legitimate business, there is a parallel economy of black market trade, prostitution and organised crime. In contrast, the North Korean border is deadly quiet. The tragic situation across the Tumen river means that there is regular influx of North Korean refugees crossing the borders into China. |
 | Blackpool weekend, England (2001) Blackpool weekend : Blackpool has been attracting working class visitors and holidaymakers since the 19th century when the most famous city's attractions were built. To face the big slowdown in tourism in the 70s, Blackpool has turned itself into a party town, hosting Hen and Stag parties every weekend. This new Blackpool identity should be enhanced with the national plans to liberalise betting laws and create a local Las Vegas in an attempt to regenerate the local economy. |
Books
 | Undercurrents A member of the Vu Agency since 2001, Ian Teh has been documenting on China for the past ten years and has exhibited his photography all over the world. His artistic creativity stems from his interest in social, environmental, and political issues of the modern world. Throughout countless journeys within China, Teh offers a glimpse of another life and another world rarely seen, in places such as the coal mines of the northeast and the border towns along the Sino Russia North Korean border. Teh is a storyteller. He organically threads together images of integrative colors, creating storylines based on real events, alive with nuances. He encourages his viewers to look beyond the outwardly descriptive nature of his work, discover the narrative that lies beneath, and fill in the gaps. Teh’s photography is a potential dialogue, an eloquent starting point for the viewer to travel beyond the limits of a photograph’s frame and moment in time. Text by: Christian Caujolle Publisher: Timezone 8 (2008) 196 pages Size: 190 x 280 mm ISBN :978-988-17521-2-3 
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Exhibitions
 | Dark Clouds (Atlanta, GA) From 2008-07-18 to 2008-08-30 Kiang Gallery is pleased to present the award winning photojournalist, IAN TEH, whose recent work, Dark Clouds, explores man’s impact on his environment. The artist focuses on coal related industries in China, exploring the dark side of China's economic rise and the environmental costs suffered due to the developing nation's increasing need for energy.
China’s economy is exploding and behind the scenes of this ‘economic miracle’, helping to build and sustain it, is an industrial revolution powered by cheap labor and driven by an insatiable need for coal. Coal for electricity, coal for...  More information... |
 | Merging Boundaries and Dark Clouds (Beijing) From 2008-04-26 to 2008-06-10 A member of the VU Agency since 2001, Ian Teh has been documenting on China for the past ten years and has exhibited his photography all over the world. The Malaysian-born, british photo reporter's artistic creativity stems from his interest in social, environmental, and political issues of the modern world...'Teh's vision, both sensitive nd caring of information, would not be expressed in any other way than with an elegant, refined, touching palette.' Christian Caujolle More information... |
Corporate
Biography
Biographie de Ian TehPrix et bourses 2004 Finalist for the CCF foundation of Photography 2001 Joop Worldpress Masterclass 1994 Type Directors Club: Award for highly commended work in Baseline magazine 1993 Time Out photographer of the year in association with Pentax Expositions 2007 Chai - Na China, group exhibition. Rencontres D'Arles, France 2006 Noctambulations, as part of the Air de Paris, VU exhibition sponsored by Hermés in London, Paris, New York, Berlin, Hong Kong, Singapore 2006 VU' par Robert Delpire, VU' Gallery in Paris - France 2005 The Vanishing: Altered Landscapes and Displaced Lives on the Yangtze River, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York - USA Parutions Crazy English, Ventifuattro Beijing, Géo Allemagne Les écoles Olympiques en Chine,Interviu Zou Shiming, Das Magazin Beijing, Epsilon Marché en Chine, Newsweek Les écoles Olympiques en Chine, Time Bibliographie 2008 Undercurrents, Timezone 8 Ed 2006 Group publication World's Top Photographers : Photojournalism, Rotovision 2006 Group publication VU à Paris, Panini Books Ed Corporate BNP Colas Crédit Agricole ODDO Pearson Education Reed Smith Contact us... |
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