The other day at a park I stopped and watched a pair of children play. But instead of thinking of them as children at a park, I watched them as artists. Their performance was brilliant. My first exposure to the work of Jerome Ming wasn’t so different. I met Jerome while he was an MFA student at the University of Hartford. But I never saw him as a student. Jerome was far too sophisticated for the classroom. His work is made on the playground. Was it Picasso who said it took him a lifetime to draw like a child? My goal as an artist is to someday make photographs with the joyfulness of Jerome Ming. 

Alec Soth, St. Paul

Jerome Ming was born in London and has lived mostly in Asia, including Myanmar where Oobanken was photographed. Ming works with photography and often involves elements of sculpture, film-making and performance in his practice. He received his MFA in Photography from the University of Hartford (USA) and is currently based in Pretoria, South Africa.

Alec Soth was born in 1969 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he still lives, works and teaches at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. His photographs are in major public and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, and the Walker Art Center. His first book, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), gained him the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Alec Soth nominated Jerome Ming for this edition of PHOTOPAPER. It has 16 pages. Images above showing selected pages.