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Similar Friends, Flickering on the Photo
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text by Kuo Sin-Sin
How can a “narrative” turn into reality? Rarely are documentary photographs the source of inspiration for photographic artists. Having worked as a photojournalist for several decades, Shen Chao-Liang has developed a very graphic way of thinking and feeling. He uses these often forgotten lives that happen in front of his lens to tell a story with images. He merges the lives of other people with personal memories, turning them into a kind of collective consciousness that interacts and merges with the viewer.
“Outer appearance is also a kind of construction; photography just means to capture the things that happen and wash them up to the surface in front of our eyes.” Shen Chao-Liang uses the most shocking documentary photographs to turn them into his creative artworks, it’s his way of contributing to modern art. Maybe this ability stems back to his decade-long work for newspapers, that kind of experience that you only get for trading in your youth; the results are very mature, warm and topical pictures. Shen Chao-Liang doesn’t deny that when he first took up his camera to create free art, he didn’t really know how to go about it. Frankly put it; being passively creative for a long time he kind of forgot how to come up with original ideas. In all his time of working for newspapers, he needed to pay attention to the issues at hand and with patience. Maybe this is what made him decide to use the idea of long-term observation for his creative work. But it really needed strong willpower to stick to that concept; because there are no rules and no budget. It was a trade off from an organized life to an uncertain one, just because those extraordinary things he wanted to document might disappear.
In Shen Chao-Liang’s works STAGE, Reflections of Nan-fang-ao, YULAN Magnolia Flowers, Tsukiji Fish Market and his other works, in the black and white pictures there is a strong sense of cohesive thought, whereas in his colored pictures logic thinking is needed to get the ideas. In his works there is not one case where Shen Chao-Liang chose the same incident as a topic; from his selection the viewer gets a feeling of how the different backgrounds of artists can influence their later work, influence their way of telling a story and also their definition of themselves. To us who are living in an environment and time of fast-paced urbanization, rural areas and their old traditions is already a very remote idea, seemingly unreachable, although we don’t agree with many aspects of our own socialization and environment. But maybe this feeling is almost the same as the one Shen Chao-Liang has when coming home after a day shooting outside, going into the darkroom to develop his films. “The traditional sense of what is beautiful will never be abandoned, tradition and modernity can co-exist,” Shen Chao-Liang says. His thought also shines through when he says that he wants to stick to the habit of turning every series of his artworks into a published paper version. He thinks that the result of print on paper is most suited to permanently preserve photographic art. To him, the creation of a book is just like organizing an exhibition, the process of choosing the right pictures, then arranging them into a desirable order on the pages. The only difference to looking at the photo sets is that nobody would distract you for you are in your own space, without time limitations.
Maybe creative work is just about the joy of capturing the right moment before it is gone forever. When Shen Chao-Liang went to Japan to study, he came across a sentence that would explain the whole human existence to him, “One lifespan, and one encounter.” This saying originates from the art of Japanese tea ceremony, lifespan means the entire life of a person, whereas encounter means that in life there is only one encounter. This concept is also coherent with the concept moment used in Zen, a Japanese form of Buddhism, which means that every moment is unique, which makes it necessary for us to not take anything for granted. This spirit of his is obvious in every single one of his photographs. When he walks into that small harbor that he was so familiar with since he was a small kid, he enters the life of the ordinary people as an observer on two levels; every time he presses the shutter release button, the concept of moment is in his mind, letting his most inner self interact with the objects of the external world, giving birth to the culture and habits that are so normal in the eyes of others all over again. Every time he is out to take pictures, he interacts with the subjects of his photographs, his experience enabling him to quickly read the expressions of the people being photographed and understand their feelings, turning the whole situation into meaningful and immediate photographs. Every picture tells a whole story, turning into something new in the mind of every new spectator, extending the possibilities of the story. During the protest of every new series of works, Shen Chao-Liang puts his own self into the pictures, in the best meaning of the idea of One lifespan, One Encounter.
Cacao Vol.3, 2011.06 |
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