Bronze Laughter
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During our trip to Vancouver to attend the opening of the Bigger Than A Book, Wilder Than A Tree art show we stayed in the Sylvia Hotel which overlooks this sculpture. Located in Morton Park next to English Bay the sculpture is called A-maze-ing Laughter and is by Yeu Minjun of China. Apparently it is extremely popular in Vancouver, so much so that a campaign was raised to keep the statue in place after the Vancouver Biennale ended in 2011. At $1.5 million, that is indeed a lot of interest; much of the tab was picked up by a Vancouver couple that have a very successful business.
The sculpture did not really resonate with me, but it does make a great subject for photography. These are long exposures which I chose partly to eliminate most of the people and many cars too, but also to see how it worked with HDR. All the detail shots are taken in the evening after we returned from Christina Mackie’s show. The overhead views are early the following morning from our hotel window on the eighth floor, also longer exposures, except the black and white which is an afternoon exposure.
All are bracketed shots processed as HDR with Photomatix. I think that the details shots really lend themselves well to this method – no matter how you process them, photos under street lights just seem to have a strange feel. These do too, but with much less of the typical weird colour of either street lamps or HDR. There is a bit of ghosting, but that is the case in the original long exposures with people walking into and out of the shot, not to mention star trails. In one you can even see the faint blue stripe of someone’s cell phone as they walked among the sculptures. I think this is a neat blend of techniques, and am happy with how it worked out.
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To see larger views, click on any of the thumbnails below, navigate with the arrows and escape to return to this page.
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- 24mm mono
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Canon EOS 5Dii, Canon 50mm/1.4, 100mm/2.8 and Nikkor-N 24/2.8mm lenses, ISO1250 for night shots and ISO100 for overhead views.
burnt embers 
Tremendous photography of very unusual installation. Our son returned from two weeks in Vancouver earlier today – I must ask him if he spotted this.
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Thanks! I hope your son got some time in the mountains around Vancouver – not super high, but many very nice places readily accessible from the city.
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Yep, I have to be honest, the subject is less than great. Less than good in many ways, really. But the photography is AWESOME! I love what you’re doing in your darkroom these days, Ehpem, it’s a highlight of my day to come across your latest blog posts!!
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I am glad that you like these, the shots I mean. The fact that the statue called out to me to take pictures must in some ways raise its merit, even if to my naked eye it is less interesting.
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I didn’t like those sculptures in the first few shots, but by the end of the series, they’d sort of started to grow on me. But I think that’s due to my fondness for long-exposure night shots more than the sculptures themselves! My favorite shot of all, though, was the mono from the hotel. I keep going back to look at it.
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Hi Melinda. Thanks for the comment. I am glad you like that one. I am still of two minds about some of the HDR effects including in mono, and that shot is at the edge of what I want to achieve. Still, I liked it enough to post it. There really is a lot to sort out with HDR and I have only scratched the surrface.
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Hi Ephem. I saw these sculptures in June when I was there. They didn’t really resonate with me either, but they are sort of interesting. I guess I had a neutral sort of reaction to them.
They really are shiny in HDR and have a lot of life emanating from them in the night shots.
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Hi Karen. They are pretty shiny at night from the streetlights. And, the long exposures mean that occasionally from some angles they are raked by passing headlights too. I think the HDR accentuates that a bit, Neutral reaction is pretty much where I come from with them too, though I right away did want to take pictures of them, so maybe that is a sort of positive.
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The folks in Vancouver are a lot more progressive that they are in Webster if this sculpture is any indication. It’s borderline hideous. However, the photos are very nice and I appreciate the aerial view so we can get an idea of the size and location. Are those palm trees?
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I think that Vancouver is a pretty forward looking city. It’s young and in the past 20-30 years has exploded in size and really wants to be seen as modern and a centre for the arts, and so on. Like so many young places that are dedicated to ‘progress’ there is not a lot of respect for the past, nor necessarily an abundance of good taste either.
However, having lived in Europe for a number of years, and seeing the kinds of public art and buildings that are inserted into those beautiful old cities, I appreciate this kind of approach more than had I stayed in Victoria all my life (Victoria’s idea of public art are large fibreglass moulds of killer whales, each painted differently by a local artist, often really badly). I think that art and architecture that causes people to think and form opinions and to talk about them is successful in an important way (unlesss they are just plain terrible and no one likes them).
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I find these shots deeply unsettling. That sculpture would be enough for me to move out of Vancouver, if I lived there. The palm trees surprised me. I didn’t realize they could grow that far north.
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Hi Doug! Between you and Paula I think the blog comments have distilled the local range of responses to this work. Fortunately Vancouver is a big city and if you did live here you could stay away 🙂 I personally think they need some heavy weathering, at the very least.
Palm trees will grow in this area, but only if encouraged, not by nature’s design. And, the rare hard winters can kill them, or many of them.
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I love these shots…and I love the memories they evoke. On our first family trip to Vancouver we stayed at the Sylvia, truly one of the most beautiful hotels. The room was ridiculously spacious with high ceilings and wonderful views of the beautiful city that is Vancouver. And last March, I spent a fun evening at the parkette with those statues taking pictures of my daughter hamming it up…imitating the statues’ poses. That brief visit, allowing me a glimpse into her new West Coast life, will always be a treasured memory!
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Hi Paula – it’s great to get your comment. I think you are one of very many people that respond to these sculptures that way. Anything that makes people laugh, or even to imitate laughter, must serve some public good.
The Sylvia is a treasure – pretty ancient by Vancouver standards but unspoiled and in the very best location possible.
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