As Seen by TV

Thought I’d compile my most “interesting” (favorite, influential, etc.) shots from the past year.
Enjoy.

Notable events: Welcoming 2009 in Belgium/Holland; Best Man at the TOMMEL wedding in Miami; Dystopia ¦ Utopia solo photo exhibition; Goodbye NY / Hello SH; 60th Anniversary of the People’s Republic of China; Taoist Monastery outside Chongqing; Shanghai/Shanghai/Shanghai; and of course all the people that made it happen.

I met up with a buddy yesterday and we aimlessly hit up SH, meeting at People’s Square and walking east down Nanjing towards the river, grabbing some dumplings then catching a ferry over to Pudong and hitting up the Jin Mao Tower.  We had wanted to go up the SWFC, but weren’t about to drop 150RMB for the experience.  We figured we didn’t have to spend 70RMB for the JMT either, as we could just walk into the Grand Hyatt (the hotel that occupies the top 35 stories) as “hotel guests”.  We were right.

Standing from inside the Jin Mao, I had forgotten how unsettling it was to stand there and look down all those hollow stories, the spiraling balconies don’t help either.
One picture also shows the footprint for the 632m (2073ft) Shanghai Tower set for 2014 completion and designed by Gensler (a nice video can be found on their website).
One thing that I think is kind of funny, is how back-in-the-day all the tallest buildings were in Europe, then they all moved to North America, and now Asia.  China/Hong Kong/Taiwan as of right this moment account for 6 of the top 10, Malaysia has 2, the US has 1, and I hear there’s a beast of a building in Dubai.  Europe’s tallest on the other hand, comes in at #89… and it isn’t even in “Europe-Europe”, it’s in Moscow.
To put it in perspective, the Shanghai Tower will be 3.5x taller than the London Gherkin or almost 2x that of  New York City’s Chrysler Building.  I’m pretty excited to witness the birth of a crazy structure (I gave up on the Freedom Tower).

Welcome!

This blog will begin shortly…  images, stories, and general nonsense about a lonely Belgian-American photographer-extraordinaire and his relocation from Brooklyn to Shanghai.

Till soon.

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