Speaking Beyond Words
by Ai Wei Wei
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Feng Yan’s photography captures random
daily scenes without belonging to any particular category, with no specific
selection of neither form nor content; yet, they are indispensable parts of
our routine life. These parts are so commonplace that they draw nobody’s
attention or appreciation. They are what we delete in feelings and
communication——indifference resulted from life’s training. We are
emotionally used to the distinction between the significant & the
insignificant, the necessary & the unnecessary. To heed and express the
“insignificant” emotions calls for a higher price. If you unfold a person’s
life, you’ll find many missing images, like the remains of a torn picture.
Feng Yan’s pictures reveal this part of
emotion. In the empty scene without human presence, the photographer is the
sole spectator waiting for the moment to press the button. The uncertain, hesitant
sentiment prevails the scenes which echoes the photographer’s meaningless
feelings; these weightless pictures drag us into a mood——a context normally
seen without observation thus unable to enter.
Like a seasoned hunter, Feng Yan is
acutely precise about what to shoot & how to shoot. His visual world
exists with a different order that is somewhat blurry and dangly but
enlivened with harmonious tranquility in unity with the past and the
future. The expression leans toward a substantial existence, at once
concrete but casual.
Photography sustains a non-reality, but
rather point to a dishonest relationship with reality. From the second that
actual, substantial light is cast on the film, its independent existence
magically betrays its matrix. The substantial existence—parasitic in our
perception of reality— resurrects itself at the very moment upon the touch
of sight. Sight is part of mentality and perception is connected with
insight. We can’t really see what fails to enlighten us. We see what we choose
to see; perceive what we want to perceive thus building our mental
framework and understanding of the world. Our way of paving the basics of
social anesthetics. What you see is who you are and what your world is all
about.
Feng Yan’s grandest bewilderment &
interest lie in the sense of distance in photography: the reflection on
distance, the distance of reality and psychology. Is there distance of
reality? How to measure psychological distance? His focus on distance gives
his photography a clear sense of notion, making his choice and assessment
unique. Picking the distance between him and his object also unveils the
mood, the aura and the meaning of his work.
The tone of his photography is loose,
drifting, missing, dissolving and meaningless, all but implied a different
mentality and value pursuit. In this world, there are many levels of
realities and different human philosophies; that’s the reason why we share
one world yet living in worlds apart.
Aug.17, 2005
( Translated by Cui Yang ) |
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