text by Lin Chi-Ming
Visual Quantity
Firstly, let’s consider a naive question: “How much visual “quantity” does it take before making a photograph interesting?” The question is naive because of the said assumption: seemingly there must be certain level of “quantity” before making something visually interesting. In a vulgar Hollywood-style manner, this question seems to suggest that one can only be satisfied by over-whelming his or her eyes. As a French proverb once said “rincer l'oeil”. The reduction of visual quantity, similar to washing one’s eyes, is like an overexposed image losing its pictorial details.
Nonetheless, this question itself is still very interesting.
The question makes connection between vision and quantity, generating further questions. The conventional methods, such as Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) analysis of the sublime, divide subjects into aspect of quantity and dynamics. The aspect of quantity can further be broken into characteristics such as magnitude, infinity, countless-ness, and uncontainable, etc. “The camera lens is like a mechanical eye wondering around in reality,” it abstracts the physical experience that happens when human eyes see an object. A photographic image could be enlarged or reduced at one’s will, it brings objects that are huge and remote into one’s palm, and it can also make a sprout of a plant colossal by enlargement. A sense of massiveness that comes from contrasting objects to the human body seems like an imprecise or invalid subject matter in photograph.
Perhaps we should consider an alternative discussion on the relationship between “visual interest” and “quantity”. The quantity here does not refer to proportion (large vs. small) but richness (more vs. less). When we describe a scenery being “picturesque”, we do not necessarily mean it is literally like certain landscape painting we’ve seen, nor do we suggest artificial craftsmanship. Such expression is merely talking about the visual richness of a scene, like a street in a Parisian traditional market (I am picturing the lower section of Moufftard Street, near the small chapel); the sight is full of color, light, shadow, shapes, and symbols, responding with each other like numerous stimuli arousing visitors’ senses.
Though the concept of “rich in details” seems to derive from the “visual interest”, we could further problematize this idea; does the so-called “rich in detail” refer to “motif” in conventional painting analysis, or does it relatively contain certain aspects of textures? (I am using “relatively” here because of the famous Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) statement: “The color red of a carpet must be one of the red felt in a certain rug”, which suggests that subject matter, texture and color are inseparateble in physical life experience.)
Re-categorizing the “rich in details” concept may appear as a theoretical game for aestheticians, but when one sees the images in Chen Shun-Chu’s On the Road series, this dialogue becomes relevant.
A quick glance at a selection of images from this series, we should initially be preoccupied by scenes of “nothingness”: empty roads, rid of references of orientation, no characters, and therefore no events brought on by people. Obscure location, absence of people, no happenings, so consequently no narratives.
However, the absence of those “photographical motifs” does not make Chen’s works visually “uninteresting”. First, the “richness in details” is still present. We would not use terms such as “empty” or “lonesome” to describe these images, it would not be precise or proper. Although “road” or “travel” is the underlining theme that links this series of work, it does not imply that “nothingness” should be connected with ideas such as “Zen” or “emptiness”. If Chen’s works can clean (wash) our eyes, it is not achieved though mere reduction.
Visually speaking, these works are interesting; even with so much “nothingness”, the “rich in details” gives the pieces an interesting tone. Though the works didn’t overwhelm our eyes, we would not describe the series being near emptiness in terms of quantity. This is a question of aspects; the narratives and events are perhaps minimized in the works, but other parts are instead addressed or highlighted, hence the new question: what kind of details and aspects keep such richness?
Autobiography and Road
Before answering the question above, it would be beneficial to briefly review the artist’s previous works. Until his Journeys in Time series in 2004 (which relates to the title of this book), Chen experimented with various installation methods while the subject matter focused in family memories. For example, in installation Family Black Boxes (1992), Chen placed his family photos in vintage wooden boxes, expressing the emotional responses from pieced and contained memories. If we categorize the works utilizing old family photos as mixed-media works (i.e. Family Scene of 1996), other series like Assembly: Family Parade from 1992 to 1999 possess stronger sense of installation. According to the artist, these works are more like environment art[1]. The latter series went beyond his original family scope. He took photos of many family members (six family members and three friends) and connected their portraits with specific houses and lands.
His two solo exhibitions after 2004 (Family Dwelling - 4x5 3 Times Series and Path to Homeland) no longer focused on the topics of family and adopts a juxtaposition of video and photograph to address the topic of “home”. He returns to two-dimension photography in Distance in Memory of 2009 and memory still remains as the basic tone in his art.
Therefore we could say, in the career of Chen as an image creator, autobiography (one of a fundamental characters of photographed images, a linkage to memory) is always one of the emphasized characters. On the other hand, Chen is one of the representing figures on photography installation in Taiwan. Chen’s new publication and exhibition series on one hand “return” to straight photography or pure photography (we need to carefully discuss the two terms in details later), but on the other hand lets go his usual autobiographical content. From this perspective, this series possesses a quite distinguished position, as if the creator, after two decades of art career, suddenly shows off a long-hiding private path. It is like having a day-time and a night-time Ferdinand de Saussure; one concentrates on structural linguistics while the other secretly carries out a search of hidden meanings behind text.
From another perspective however, with a topic of road or walking on the road (road as metaphor of travel), the subject is in fact not far from his previous autobiographical concerns; perhaps a relative remote approach?
Suppose that all photographs relate to the particular time and space of the person who presses the shutter release, an evidence of a personal trace, then the images presented lack events from the above mentioned (perhaps to be defined at another time, but it is not the conventional concept of events relating to the subjects photographed, but rather an event that connects more purely and directly to the act of photographing); the implied voyage preserves a certain connection with the occupied time space by the author (an index to that particular time and space). Besides involving tracks of the author and the time space connected, the series On the Road furthermore involves an important element of photograph that generates an intimate connection with the artist. Conventionally this element is called “viewpoint”, but we are prone to use “the way of seeing” instead.
Pure Photograph?
From the various “nothingness” mentioned above (the lack of people, settings, events, and stories), the probable extended question: is this a case of pure photograph?
There are at least two approaches to this question, the first being what is the concept of pure photograph, how does it relate to abstract photograph; the other is to engage from a historical landscape photography perspective which this series barely qualifies to fall under.
If abstraction refers to a style in which the content possesses no recognizable representation, then it is very difficult for an image to be abstract unless with non-photographic (non-exposure) methods, like directly interfering films, i.e. drawing, scratching, burning, mildewing or chemical alternation, or direct exposure in the darkroom, such as leaving light traces. This predicament is due to the fundamental definition of photography - the preservation of a moment on a sensitized surface by light traveling through a lens (this applies to both conventional photograph and digital photograph). Therefore, as long as it is a photograph, there is always a “reality” or a “world” that once existed in front of the lens, and thus difficult to separate with representation. Even if a photographer adapts a blur approach (e.g. defocusing, shaking, shooting moving objects in high speed, multi-image, overexposure or underexposure) to make the subject hard to identify, that is still a subject in reality and the whole process a representation.
Of course, an abstraction in the physical nature of objects is one that could co-exist with representation. Take the steel structure of Eiffel Tower for example, or the cast shadow of any geometric modern architecture, the subject may be quite figurative, but the structure framework has an architectonic type of abstraction. In this way, Chen’s new series indeed possesses a physically concrete nature but nonetheless with an abstract quality.
Another approach to discuss the vacant and yet loaded style of Chen’s art is to track for literary clues. Although strange to classify these works into the category of landscape photograph, but in fact they are.
Because photography was invented in an era of geographical discovery, developed simultaneously with colonization, expedition and immigration, therefore its history is closely related to landscape and traveling. For a traveler, photography is a visual tool to gain control over the unknown, treating the unfamiliar with a comprehensible style and to apply pre-existing references to generate meanings. For example, the British aesthetics “picturesque” use to be a reference for taming foreign landscapes into ideal farm scene. The images brought back to the United Kingdom by a late 19th century photographer John Thomson (1837-1921), who traveled to Taiwan and China, were exotic but not overly bizarre or estrange to his viewers (the author thought of the photo nicknamed Fishing Party by Thomson); however this was not the case with America. The huge landscape of America is unsettling to the heaven-like picturesque aesthetics. In the second half of 19th century, American photographers documented how men changed natural landscapes. By 20th century, Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), Ansel Adams (1902-1984) and Edward Weston (1886-1958) elevated landscape photography into a pursue of self-conscious aesthetic: light and shadow, form and shape, texture and contrast. These photographers confidently realized the essence of this medium, and thus formed the foundations of modern photography. By the time of late modernism and post-modernism, all ideas and concepts mentioned above had again been reexamined and questioned; the relationship between human being and the land is no longer thought as a direct one. Guiding by conceptual art, photographers questioned traditional ideas of nature and neutral landscape and with a neo-topological approach, they critiqued political and social issues relating to industry, urban development and pollution.[2]
With a historic approach, one could find that landscape photography has developed under the framework of “the different vs. the familiar”, “natural vs. artificial”, and “purity vs. subject matters”. Among these, pure photography, though not a strive for abstraction, explores the essence of the medium of photography through the category of landscape, especially in the visual parts, i.e. light, shadow, form, texture and contrast. On the other hand, even though the focus of each era is different, so long as it falls into the category of landscape photography, this conceptual discourse would be applicable, including Chen’s current series. As we analyzed earlier, the nature of diluted thematic elements and an emphasis of pure visual elements seems to be an extension of modernist landscape aesthetics; however, in a closer observation we would notice those other concepts such as “the different vs. the familiar” and “natural vs. artificial” still apply and further direct our attention to some fringed elements in this “series”. (Perhaps it is better to view them as a “collection” rather than a “series”)
If we take the clues in “the different vs. the familiar”, some images relating to On the Road might seem very bizarre or even “unsuitable” from the viewpoint of “what one saw on the road” or “the theme of road”. They were neither taken as what the artist saw on the road nor taken for the subject matter of the road, sometimes this subject matter is double emphasized due to a photo taken from inside a car; not only the scene outside, but also part of the car (as a metaphor of road, P.35 1994-1, P.39 1994-3, P.41 1994-4, P.44 1994-6, P.45 1994-7, P.79 2001-4, P.87 2001-8) or the body (indicating the traveler’s physical body, P.49 1995-2, P.111 2005-3) is highlighted. The selected photos stood out in this collection because they were scenes taken from outside of the artist’s residence (the studio, P83 2001-6, P.95 2002-4). From the objectivity of the location, the grounds for selected photos are questionable - an absence of images of the road, they were taken from a high rise building, capturing only images of other buildings. It is quite forced to interpret these as “traveling” because the subjects are of everyday scenes, one even showed the reflection of an indoor lamp, implicating the artist’s studio, P.95 2002-4. However, perhaps the latter statement demonstrated the dialectics of “the different vs. the familiar”. Although what have been taken are unappealing modern buildings, daily life scenes from outside of a window, but because of the artist’s act of photographing (or the way he sees), they suddenly present an uncanny and seemingly meaningful scene. Though they were not sceneries from traveling or of a road, these images underscore “the different vs. the familiar ” in the dialectics of conventional landscapes.
Observing from “natural vs. artificial” point of view, borrowing the statement that “road is made by man”, shooting road indicates no intention to capture the “pure nature”. When American photographer Timothy H. O’Sullivan (1840-1882) went to photograph in the Midwest deserts, he intentionally left traces from carrying photography equipments back to the caravan, forming a temporary track, a fleeting man-made mark. Road is a symbol of men’s actions and activities, sometimes it could destroy the nature just like stabbing into one’s heart. However, the relation between men and nature is not a stable one; this is particularly evident in On the Road collection. Take shooting angles for example, some directly-taken images of roads have certain elements that make the artificial not just purely man-made; like the silhouettes of tree leafs and branches, P.31 1993-3, P.115 2007-3, it even could be regarded as a blow to men’s self confidence, like the corrosion from aging. The latter is a symbol of nature conquering the man-made world, like the suspending beauty in the aesthetics of ruins, or a grandiose Eschatology (science) scene. The extreme contrast to these are images focusing on natural elements; for example a picture taken at Hualien P.101 2004-1 (off Suhua Highway), where a majestic scene of mountains meeting the ocean is presented, while the road (which makes the image possible) is not total elimination, is visually compressed into a very tiny entity, having an assuming existence. Majority of the works in On the Road are in between the nature and the artifice. Among the road-scene works, one particular piece taken at Penghu had plants protruding into the road, forming an irregular wavy line; this line creates a dialogue with rain puddles in the picture, a long-term and temporary dialogue between ground plants and the reflection of celestial phenomena, P.81 2001-5. Between them is a man-made sign, a double-line lane mark; the sharpedged-geometric shape forms a high contrast between the two elements. Using contrast and comparison among different elements to form meaningful construction is a common practice in photography, but with different artists it could present various kinds of possibilities. In a rare image with a human figure in this collection, though the subject compositionally occupied where figurative portraits normally do, due to a clear focus on clouds above and backlighting on the person’s face, the focus of the image is thus shifted to the upper portion of the picture, P.37 1994-2. In the occasionally-shown figurative image from this collection, the human form is subsidiary to nature (sky and clouds).
The Structural Aesthetics Landscapes
From the historical perspectives mentioned above, we could roughly position Chen’s new collection of works as aesthetics-oriented landscape photography. Although the concepts of “the different vs. the familiar” and “natural vs. artificial” are still applicable, the emphasis is after all addressing the pure characters of photography. Differentiating from those modern photography masters, Chen’s landscape photographs not only discuss the visual characters of photography, but also include a “self” perspective.
Even though these images are the so-called “straight photograph”, referring to non-staging or no digital manipulation in post-production, the images basically are a found landscape (strictly speaking with a few figurative or partial human form images regarded as conceptual exceptions, P.37 1994-2, P.61 1997-4, P.63 1998, P.111 2005-3). But nevertheless, the so-called “one to be found” is often “the one to be looked after”; such search relates to the author’s subjectivity in terms of creative inspiration. Many works sharing similar stylistic characters but taken from very different time and place is a clear evidence of the above viewpoint.
One element appears quite often, linking those works developed over many years – the frame, particularly the function of corners, cropping the subjects with sharp frames. This is a stylistic character noted since the invention of photography, it is related to the optical principle of photography as well as the preservation of time. Because photography is the freezing of a moment, the marks left by the cropping of a frame is also an internal indicator contained by a snapshot. In close examination, Chen systematically arranged acute triangles in the corners of his works; these parts often utilize brightness, texture and content to form strong contrast with other parts in a work. Use a 1993 photo taken at Jinguashih, Taipei, P.31 1993-3 for example, there is a triangle formed by shadow appearing in the lower left corner. The photo consists mainly with the silhouettes of leafs and branches, but the small triangular dark shapes in the corners contrasted the organic forms of the branches. Another example with a compositionally complex image taken at Shenkeng, P.83 2001-6; the reflections and shadows inside a house forms a contrast with the river scene outside (perhaps a metaphor for nature and civilization), which resulted in a cross-like effect. When we find an acute triangle formed by the tile wall of an architecture at the lower right corner, not only does it suggest a more solid and stable form of civilization, but it also changes our preconception of a river scene, at least some parts are recognized as architecture related gardens today.
For twenty years, Chen continues shooting images relating to road and traveling. The quantities of images selected (57) are relatively few for two decades. If his photography is a way of seeing, then the selecting process is a way to prove the existence of a personal style in his methodology. This essay could be regarded as an outline of this and Chen’s visual style.
(Translated by Lisa Chen, corrected by the author and reviewed by Larry Shao)
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1 Chen Shun-Chu (2004). “Journeys in Time – Imagery Reality and Illusionary Memory in Mixed Media”, in Journeys in Time, published by author, p. 4.
2 Susan Bright (2005). Art Photography Now. London: Thames and Hudson-Aperture, pp. 47-49. |
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