‘I’m sick of being serious’ - ‘Restless’ by Cedric Tang

At the beginning of 2023 Cedric Tang decided to curate his first solo exhibition, armed with a Pentax 67 and many rolls of Kodak Tri X 400. He pulled off a mesmerizing collection of work at the Fish Bowl Gallery within 2 months.

Here are some questions we asked the photographer about their experience and why they shot it all on film!

Who are you and what do you do?

Heyo, I’m Cedric.

I’m a photographer & director born and raised in Mauritius and currently calling Perth, Australia home.

How long have you been taking photos and how long have you been shooting film?

I’ve been taking photos for about a decade, but working full time as a photographer for close to 5 years. I picked up my first film camera in 2019. It was a little Canon AE-1, and ever since then, I’ve been hooked.

What drew you to shooting film?

Initially, it was for the fun of it. My folks have a bunch of film photos of little me when I was younger, so I wanted to give shooting film a shot. I guess it’s a nostalgic thing for me. Both my dad and grandad were both into cameras when I was growing up, so the trait passed on. Eventually it became something I did to seperate personal stuff (film) from work stuff (digital), which I needed. Now it’s all blended and I shoot film on most of my creative shoots.

You recently had your first exhibition, tell us about that?

Yeah it was great. On a good day, I feel like I have a million thoughts a day, and it was great to have an idea that stuck to me, and following through with it from conception, to pre-production, all the way to having the opening night and beyond. Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do an artist or photographer: self-lead personal projects that pay no money (you lose money if anything) on top of the regular shutter clicking work.

Cedric Tang’s 120 Kodak Tri X 400 negatives on display over a lightbox at the exhibition opening night.

What was the process, what is ‘restless’?

It was restless, lol… (pls just ban me from the lab now). To keep it 100% real, ‘restless’ was kinda born because I was feeling very uninspired with life, and work was slow due to the Christmas & New Years break, and the overall festive season during Dec/Jan. So yeah, when I was pretty much at a low point, the idea for ‘restless’ came to me. It was a way for me to explore my own sense of restlessness at the time, and perhaps have something to put all that untouched energy toward. I feel like most personal works are just people just exploring their own feelings through a particular medium. ‘Restless’ was for me as much as others. Capitalising on that feeling and turning it into a project was the hard part - so I told a few friends, reached out to a few portrait subjects, asked the team at silver halide and Tyson at fox lab to sponsor me, all before I even shot anything. What better way to fully lock yourself into a project than have a bunch of people expect something from you? Most of my self-lead projects fail because they lacked accountability, so I took care of that first things first lol.

You shot this whole exhibition on film, tell us about that?

What was the process like working with a lab, strictly black and white film and a heavy ass camera?

My Pentax 67 doubles up as a dumbbell, keeping that grind going on and off shoots.

I actually hated shooting b&w film before restless hahaha. I was always like, “bro, what’s the point of shooting b&w when u can just shoot colour and convert it?”. Somehow I thought that I would ‘lose something’ by shooting b&w - I was wrong. I realised that if I was gonna shoot something with so many variables (light, colour, location, etc..), I needed something to tie everything together. I wanted something to capture the timelessness and essence of the pieces I planned and b&w just felt right. So I bought 5 packs of trix400 having never previously shot it before, and yeah, that’s that.

Naturally when shooting film, the entire process becomes way more collaborative. From working with the lab, to working with the printer, to spending more time actually shooting because of the slow process, and getting to know each subject more as people in between changing rolls and constantly pointing the meter right at their face lol. Working with the team at Silver was a process that ended up way more rewarding that I originally thought it would be. It was so great to have people that are great at what they do get behind this project and take it beyond what I alone could’ve done by myself. It was pretty dope to head into the lab on a closed day and go through some of the scans for the first time, to then going in again for the re-scans before final print. That’s something you can actually do with local film labs, and it doesn’t get any more accomodating/individualised than that.

Exhibition photographs by Tavian Ord

Do you have any advice for anyone who might be considering creating art or an exhibition, but might not know where to start/might be scared of doing so?

Just do it fam. You know what scares me more than creating art? Doing nothing with my creativity and letting it sit in the back corner of my mind/body for the rest of my life. Time is precious and life is too dang short to be second-guessing this kind of shit. Something that scares me even more than that is regretting not having done something I’ve always wanted to, or followed through with some of my instincts when I had the passion for it. All you need is a little bit of time, some kind of effort and passion, and the desire to learn and follow through. Only one way to figure out where to start and get rid of the fear, is to start until you figure it out, and feel the fear until it goes away!

These images were scanned on our industry standard Fuji Frontier SP3000 scanner.

Curating your first exhibition with Cedric Tang