A SELF-PORTRAIT OF JINGNA

With the festive end of the Beijing Olympics last week, athletes are now either still celebrating their triumph or already continuing their training towards the next Olympics. But here is a girl who had the potential of succeeding and climbing onto the Olympics’ victorious podium, yet gave it up for her long-living interest in fashion photography.

However, Zhang Jingna’s passion has brought her to make a mark in the photography industry in merely six months. The twenty-year-old’s portfolio includes photography works for fashion magazines like Harpers Bazaar and Men’s Folio. Soon, the portfolio will include her first solo photography exhibition Something Beautiful, which, to Jingna, captures the essence of high fashion and women.

Though Jingna’s eyes lit up when she talked about her work as a photographer in her interview with Youth.SG, it was also evident that remnants of her past dream of becoming a professional air rifle sportsperson still linger in her heart as she constantly spoke of her air rifle days. Maybe this is because Beijing-born Jingna was exceptionally good in air rifle and even broke a national record at the age of fourteen. She said with a hint of sadness in her voice, “The Olympics was my dream. I really aspired to it.”

She’s a happy camper now, though: “With photography I am my own boss and I can decide what jobs I want to take and what kind of people I want to work with. It is just like when I was in air rifle – you want to do well, you want to make your country proud and win medals. Just that now I’m doing it with a DSLR.”

Fashion designing: Love for fashion found
Now a Singaporean, Jingna moved to Singapore at the age of eight with her national air rifle coach mother. Her parents divorced when she was young and now Jingna lives with her mother and nine-year-old half-sister. Usually making the news for her air rifle achievements, this time, Jingna quit the prestigious Raffles Girls’ School (RGS) at the age of sixteen to enroll herself into a five-year fashion design Master’s course at the Lasalle College of the Arts – just so she could pursue her dream.

Though her mother was unhappy about it, Jingna still took that bold move: “My mother said ‘You should study all your life.’ But I feel you can't justify [what you learn] with a piece of paper.”

She also revealed that her on-and-off studies in RGS from her air rifle training made her feel that “age was a pressure”. By the time she went back to school after her full-time training, she was already two years older than her fellow mates. But two years of being away from school also allowed her to meet people in the arts industry and motivated her to transfer to Lasalle.


Photography: “Another medium to express myself”
During her days in Lasalle, she came across a camera and started to explore its functions. Soon she saw photography as another medium to express her thoughts, just like her flair for drawing, painting and designing. As she became more exposed to photography, she found her liking for photography growing to become one that she wanted to cultivate.

Thus, Jingna took the second bold move: quit Lasalle and the national air rifle team.

Labelling fashion photographer Peter Lindbergh as one of her sources of inspiration, Jingna’s works are dark and romantic with a cinematic appeal.


Not only that. Her sense of fashion also leans towards the dark side. Dressed in black from her top to her shoes, it is no surprise that when she’s out shopping, she often goes: “Do you have this in black?”

Looking ahead: Thirty-year-old Jingna
Though Jingna has not planned what she wants to do in ten years’ time, she is sure of wanting to go either back to her homeland or Tokyo or Europe to try out as a fashion photographer there.

To her, the decisions she made are not crazy ones. She has no regrets. After all, she had nothing to lose. Jingna has no paper qualifications, but with her five years of experience in the Singapore air rifle team, she can become a coach; and her side job in artiste management is also something to fall back on. Now, she can rely on her superb skills in fashion photography.

Besides, should she fail to make it for all of the above, she can always go back to studying.

“Now, I just do what I can,” Jingna said.


Something Beautiful will be held from Sept 12-23 at The Arts House, Print Gallery. Admission is free. Her photobook is on sale here.
See more of Jingna’s work at deviantArt.

 

THIS ARTICLE IS PART OF SEPT 1-7 :: The What Issue