Caroline Chiu was born and raised in Hong Kong, and studied in the USA at Tufts University and New York University as well as photography workshops at Rockport College in Maine. Her work has been exhibited in Europe, Hong Kong, and America.  Since 2001, she has been working on a long-term project called The Chinese Wunderkammer which recreates the European precursor of the museum, the ‘wonder rooms’ full of far-flung curiosities from around the world.  For this project she assembles and photographs a wide range of Chinese and Asian cultural artefacts.  She uses a Polaroid camera weighing about 500 lbs with a negative size of 20 x 24 inches, which allows her to photograph the images at extreme magnification so that the results are as close to visual perfection as possible.  The small objects are blown up to sometimes 100 times their normal size, and details that would not normally be visible to the naked eye take on abstract meaning.  This process produces only one image per shot - the purposeful slowing down, and ceremony in the recording of the actual moment of the image-making, is a reaction to today’s digital world of retouching, re-editing, and mass media.  Chiu believes that this process results in an image that is truly unique, like a painting.Exhibitions: GOD AND MONSTERS: portraits of the Nyingjei Lam collection. Photographs by Caroline Chiu