Instagram story viewer> @far___near> Posts

FAR–NEAR

@far___near

20K

followers

4333

following

A cross-cultural book series + platform broadening perspectives of Asia through image, person, idea + history. Est. 2017.
🔥 Vol 6 on Heat out now 🔥

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

🫀in search of romance: seeking writers, photographers, and artists for @far___near Vol. 7

The origins of the word “romance” trace back to the fifth century, from the Gauls, who spoke a Latin-derived language they called Romanus, from the Latin word meaning “Rome.” By the Middle Ages, “romans” or “romanz” refers to narratives in verse — specifically stories of chivalry, devotion and impossible longing. Today, “romance” and its adjective “romantic” describe a genre, a human interaction and a feeling — deeply personal yet highly commercialized, remote from, while simultaneously steeped in, everyday life.

Where has romance found its place in the relationships, traditions, industries and fantasies of Asia and the diaspora?

We welcome unusual and critical interpretations of the theme. Please read all slides before emailing your proposals to submissions@far-near.media. We are especially on the lookout for West, Central and Indigenous Asian contributors.

The deadline to submit proposals is May 15, 2026! taken in Asia by @far___near

3

0

6 months ago

It was a thrill to open our first physical space in Chinatown this year, hosting 6 workshops, 5 shows, 4 talks, 3 screenings, 3 shoots, 2 showrooms, 1 performance, and countless intimate conversations over books, tea and turtle chips 🍵📚💚 there isn’t even enough room in this post to include all the moments we shared 🥲

Looking forward to welcoming you to year two of FAR-NEAR Studio Hours. Thank you to everyone who collaborated with us.

#farnearstudiohours taken in Canal Street (New York City Subway) by @far___near

964

36

2 years ago

🔥HOT OFF THE PRESS🔥
Advanced copies of a heat reactive special edition FAR-NEAR VOL 6 - HEAT available at NYABF and online!

Vol.6 gathers the passions, rituals, ruminations and works of art that enliven us and release steam; that have the power to temper our fears and kindle inspiration through storytelling.

From photo essays on man-made droughts in the Aral Sea and Palestine to Japanese fire rituals, 70s sauna parties and heated disputes, this volume brings the heat. Each book comes with inserts by Sha Luo and Burin Pong and a fold out dust jacket poster by Keiko Nomura.

Featuring Bint 3adel, Lara Atallah, Wen-You Cai, Macy Castañeda-Lee, Kent Chan, Serena Chang, Chiao Chen, Vivian Chuang, Toshikatsu Endo, Shoko Hashimoto, Lynn Huynh and her mother Van On, Luisa Igloria, Kaishu Iida, Brian Kanagaki, Taikou Kaneda, Minjae Kim, Christina Yuna Ko, Elinor Kry, Meiling Kry, Joon Oluchi Lee, Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee, Danny Lim, Isabel Ling, Cece Liu, Sha Luo, Sophio Medoidze, Zumrad Mirzalieva, Saburo Muraoka, Vân-Nhi Nguyễn, Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn, Quyên Nguyễn-Hoàng, Keiko Nomura, Clémence Vina Polès, Burin Pong, Samar Rajput, Nugie Rian, Abu Maen Safadi, Yumiko Sakuma, CJ Salapare, Dan San, Saturn, Ashish Shah, Shripad Sinnakaar, Akira Tatehata, Coco Chi Ting Tin, Andrea Torres, Chinchakriya Un, Matthew Wong and Han Cheng Zhen from Cambodia, Canada, China, England, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Palestine, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
167x240mm
Swiss bound with glossy, newsprint and uncoated paper
320 pages

#farnear #heat #hot #🔥 taken in MoMA PS1 by @far___near

3

13

a year ago

See you at the NYABF 🤍🤍🤍
In addition to our books, zines and goodies, we have invited a fun group of special guests to our table across the fair days.

Friday @september_projects @yuhanch3ng @oioioyster @ying_fffff

Sunday @ninetynin.e @yomnamemad taken in MoMA PS1 by @far___near

561

14

12 days ago

Join us for a conversation on the material culture of the Swahili coast and the Indian Ocean exchange with Aurelia Niat Toundji and Salwat Idi from manufactoriel.

Tuesday, September 29th 6-8pm, FAR-NEAR Studio Hours
244 Canal St 4F
New York NY 10013

Aurelia and Salwat will discuss their projects Zingatia and Kwa Maisha na Maisha Baadaye (For Life and the Afterlife). The two publications explore the material culture of the Swahili coast, with a particular focus on ceramics, as seen in Swahili domestic and funerary architecture.

The project traces how centuries of Indian Ocean exchange connected East Africa with the Arabian Peninsula, India, and China through the circulation of objects, materials, and ideas.

RSVP Link in bio
Suggested donation $5-15
Publications will be available for purchase upon availability, cash and paypal preferred.

@manufactoriel @cahiersmanufactoriel @tounzi.tounzi @salwat.idi

1_ Zingatia, collage #2, 2018, by Salwat Idi

2 _ Photograph of the interior of an 18th century merchant mansion in Lamu Town, present-day Kenya, 1884, by Sir John Kirk, courtesy of the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh

3_ Lamu house’s walls decorated with Chinese porcelains and weapons, 1884 AD. Source: Sir John Kirk Archives, courtesy of the National Library of Scotland

4_ manufactoriel’s publication Zingatia

5_ manufactoriel’s publication Kwa Maisha na Maisha Baadaye (For Life and the Afterlife) taken in Canal Street (New York City Subway) by @far___near

3

23

16 days ago

*AT CAPACITY* Join us for a presentation of the book Vietnamese Objects with co-author Quang Vinh Nguyen and photographer Cynthia Mai Ammann, co-hosted by FAR-NEAR and Superblooom*

1PM—4PM, FAR-NEAR Studio Hours
Link in bio for tickets, the book will be available for purchase ($45), cash and PayPal preferred.

With contributions from
Huy Linh Dao, Caroline Bich-Lien Herbelin, Thi Hai Nguyen, Trong Dat Nguyen, Éric Panthou, Kiersten Thamm, Quang Anh Trần, Vincent Yuen Ruiz, Thái Hà Vu @beansoupe , Philippe Truong

Photography
Cynthia Mai Ammann @cynthia.ammann , Mắt Bét @mat.bet , Kai Nguyen @unowhatswrong

Graphic design
Office for Typography @chillllllllll

Research team
Lưu Chữ @luuchuvietnam , Tien Dat Vu @foto_muses , Ostin Fam, Nhat Thanh Le @thanhle___thanhle , Xuan-Ha Nguyen Vu @grandmadeadxh

Published by
ECAL @ecal_ch & Triest Verlag @triestverlag

This publication was produced with the support of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne and HES-SO/University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland.

Refreshments provided by Mai Vino @its.maivino, Nguyen Coffee Supply @nguyencoffeesupply, and The Lucky Ox Co. @theluckyoxco taken in Canal Street (New York City Subway) by @far___near

3

32

a month ago

I first discovered Take Care of My Cat (2001) through @bookeubookeu, via their guidebook to Seoul for introverted travelers. The DVD cover immediately drew me in: a vivid, blurred photo of young women running with abandon and a delightfully catchy title. The premise was just as alluring: five friends slowly drift apart after graduation, bound together by a stray kitten. I added it to my watchlist, unaware that, just months later, @kani.releasing and @metrograph would premiere its new restoration in New York, more than two decades after its initial theatrical run (Kani continues its US screening until November in select cities).

A sunlit opening montage catches the five friends in uniform, cheering “Marching forward” by the river in a final snapshot of careless freedom. But the mood abruptly cools to a stark winter scene as one of the protagonists, Hye-ju, trudges past broken windows and battered cars on her grueling commute from industrial Incheon to her Seoul office job, tapping out evening plans on a flip phone along the way.

Released at the dawn of the new millennium, Jeong Jae-eun’s seminal feature crafts a striking, intimate portrait of young women standing at the precipice of adulthood in a rapidly modernizing South Korea. Bound by high school ties yet pulled apart by the lure of bigger, better places, crumbling traditions and the sharp realities of class division, the girls flirt with boys, careers, and their own fragility as adulthood solidifies into something they must accept.

Its initial run placed it as a cornerstone of Korean independent cinema through fan-led support, and the film now continues to strike a chord with new generations around the world. Below, @luluyaogioiello, founding editor of FAR-NEAR, speaks with writer-director @jjezoo about centering young Asian women, the mechanics of isolation and why a story anchored in the early anxieties of technology resonates even louder today. Translation by Park Jihye

Link in bio to read! taken in Incheon, Korea by @far___near

3

8

a month ago

Why did Far-Near start? | gtalks! radio YouTube

Lulu Yao Gioiello is a creative director and founding editor/publisher of the cross-cultural book series and platform FAR–NEAR, aimed at broadening perspectives of Asia through image, person, idea and history. Her annual printed book series FAR–NEAR aims to blur the boundaries in which Asia is positioned and viewed on a global scale.

Her work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library Special Collections, The Franklin Furnace/MoMA Artists’ Books Collection, the SVA Library and ICP library. Her books are sold in various art bookstores and galleries across Asia, the Americas, Europe and the UAE such as the Walker Art Center, Tsutaya Ginza, 0fr Paris, Artbook at MoCA and more.

Watch the full conversation with Lulu Yao Gioiello on gtalks! radio YouTube. Link in bio.

What we hear is who we are.🍀

🎥: @wauceonline

#gtalksradio #radiointerview by @far___near

268

26

a month ago

Aaron Laserna’s debut short documentary film, Senakulo — playing at Anthology Film Archives in New York on August 30 — is a portrait of devotion and tradition and the forces that threaten to upend them.

Every Holy Week, local Filipinos, tourists and their cameras gather in San Fernando to witness the violent rituals that have, for nearly four decades, centered around the sacrifice of one man. Each year, Ruben Enaje, playing the role of Jesus, is crucified in a graphic reenactment of Christ’s famous death.

“So many other iterations of coverage around Ruben have centered around the surface level questions about his technical process of the Crucifixion, and his ‘objective reason for why he does this practice.’ But nothing I had seen before centered his interiority, vow, and emotionality as the primary driving force,” Laserna said in an interview with FAR—NEAR about his intentions as a director. “We wanted to make sure he was centered, and he had as much control over the narrative as possible. His voice is the only one you hear throughout the film, and is the guide for the viewer into his interiority.”

Visit our link in bio or far-near.media to read the interview by @arinoana and preview a photo series shot by @aaronlaserna during and in preparation for the film.

Content warning: graphic violence, self-harm taken in San Fernando, Pampanga by @far___near

3

4

a month ago

New additions to the FAR-NEAR library 💘📖 taken in Canal Street (New York City Subway) by @far___near

3

1

a month ago

When @ezekielarchive began Somewhere between a doll and a dog, they found themselves in the slow, often uncomfortable terrain of unmaking. Born in the south of the Philippines, Ezekiel’s family immigrated to England in the early 2000s. After attending Catholic school, they moved to London to study fashion and photography, pursuing a place within creative industries that thrive off of diversity in class, race and gender identity, but are rarely represented behind the scenes. It was only after graduating that they began to reckon with the cost of that pursuit: how much of themselves had been edited, softened, or erased in the name of acceptance.
“I gradually came to realise that I, a person who often felt ashamed of my working-class background and for being an immigrant, had conformed and assimilated so far into white middle-class culture that I had ultimately lost a sense of self in the process.”

Somewhere between a doll and a dogis an unflinching, confessional and diaristic archive of transness. Shot across The U.K., Europe, the U.S. and Philippines, the book positions transness as a fluid state that transcends borders, binaries and Western frameworks.
“As a first generation immigrant, the project saw me returning to my country of birth after 10 years, to reconnect with pre-colonial attitudes towards gender, where fluidity has long been part of the culture and mythology.”
The three-year visual diary blends dairy fragments, archival family portraits, and ephemera alongside fleeting sexual encounters, moments in hyper-masculine spaces and tender images of trans friends and lovers to articulate a language for the unfiltered textures of trans and queer life.
FAR–NEAR speaks with Ezekiel about living between cultures, returning to the Philippines, and how the project became a way of rediscovering gender beyond the binaries imposed by both East and West. Visit our link in bio to read!

#farnear taken in The Philippines by @far___near

3

3

2 months ago

“Again and again, Kagawa’s acting begins with something received from outside: a director’s spatial demand, another actress’s bodily solution, the weight of a costume, the behavior of a cat. Her artistry lay in what she made of these conditions — receiving the world of the studio floor and returning it through her own body as performance.“

In a new essay for @far___near, @6.mei.1 considers Kyōko Kagawa’s idea of hansha 反射, a Japanese word encompassing both reflection and reflex, and the networks of knowledge through which she learned to turn direction, circumstance, and the bodies of others into performance.

The Kyōko Kagawa Rarities series begins today, bringing together films from the actress’s 70-year career at @asiasociety and @anthologyfilmarchives, guest curated by @jsphsb and Akinaru Rokkaku

Read the full essay at far-near.media or via the link in bio. taken in Anthology Film Archives by @far___near

3

3

2 months ago