In his sonnet Correspondences, Baudelaire declares the universe
as a “Forest of Symbols”, in which, everything symbolizes each
other.
Walking through Feng Yan’s “Forest of Meaning”
constructed by images, I suddenly came to realize that his name is
somewhat symbolic (his name literally means to seal the rock). Like
an archaeologist with great caution, he peeled “pieces of meaning”
off the sealed rock of memory and display them with delicacy. Then
comes the hard question he poses to the viewers—are these pieces
meaningful?
Doubtlessly, his pictures have shaken our long established
aesthetics & interpreting experiences of “photography” regulated
by ideology & salon aesthetics, driving these standardized
“photographic concepts” into embarrassment. I would rather place his
works under the more neutralized term “picture” or “image” in
efforts to redefine the “technical metaphor” which originates from
mechanics and has now evolved into the standard aesthetic notion
“photography.” If anyone is interested in translating this article
into English, one may endanger himself or herself with the “trap of
word game.”As a matter of fact, playing this overloaded “word game”
on purpose is to quickly walk out of the forest of meaning into a
new world. This intentional technical barrier is presented for the
prevention of being lost in conventional interpretation.
Excessive social dimensions have long since piled upon
photography, leading the typological study to extreme chaos. To
generalize, photography is viewed either as means of ideological
propaganda overstressed with teaching purposes or as a function to
please the eye in an amplified, distorted and snobbish manner.
Beginning with the first category—when the recording function of
photography is lowered to the graphics of ideology, its “reality”
quality has been successfully replaced by the deception &
hypocrisy of propaganda. Besides numerous phony pose & play
“reality” there is huge visual deceit behind the so called
“objective snapshot.” Why is this timing and not that timing? Why is
this angle and not that angle? Why is this moment of action and not
that moment? From the perspective of image sociology &
dissemination, “kinesics” would disclose different motives &
“real” secrets in the visual metaphor given by different
photographers who pick different “moments” for their particular
objects.
The second category is the conventional interpretation of
“Artistic Photography.” From historical perspective, this newly
invented photography was a “novelty” originated from the
technological monster; the lack of aesthetic confidence naturally
drove it towards painting in terms of picture composition &
shadow tone. In the history of camera, the “painting photography” is
the due product of that period that lacked aesthetic confidence.
Although new layers of meaning may be regenerated from the
perspective of postmodern aesthetics, they are within the limits
of“interpretation.” In fact, this salon aesthetics based on worldly
but sugary aesthetic experiences have prevailed the camera practice,
and before the digital technology, people exerted to apply various
nearly “witchcraft” physical & chemical dark room techniques to
make photography that resembles painting. Years ago, I took a camera
class in which all the professors used the best of this opportunity
to brandish these renowned skills & techniques to technically
satisfy their craftsmanship. I was then deeply suspicious of this
practice that violates the simple aesthetics of camera.
In practice, under the long established guidelines of
“Revolutionary Realism”, these two functions converge to preach one
“optimistic, upbeat” visual model of the subjective, hypocritical
mainstream ideology. Even the seemingly non-ideological landscape
& still life imply the mainstream discourse of“our beautiful
country” and “optimistic living attitude.”
Not long ago in China National Museum of Fine Arts, I
happened to see a “casual” exhibition that is part of the “official”
Sino-French Cultural Exchange Project. The Paris cityscape shown by
French photographers of 1930’s mesmerized me with photographers’
respect for camera’s unique simple aesthetics of light & shadow
and their respect for the object as being in itself. These pictures
directly remind its viewers that such are the “work” produced by
that cold machine.
Holding the pictures by Feng Yan, a “photographer” who retains an
ambiguous identity that graduated from Beijing Film Academy, I once
again feel the respect for the “object” itself. I put quotation
marks on his photographer title because he is using this title to
play the role of being cute & naughty while he is doing the
business of
“anti” photography underneath. Araki Nobuyoshi said, “I do want
to shit in a crystal stream.” Feng Yan put it this way, “Some
commonplace objects and environment would summon me to use
destructive measures to save them from the fate of being instantly
symbolized (notice here he used the personified term— they)” as to
“discover the intact order existing in the object itself.” and “the
fate of being symbolized” is an excellent summary. I’ve been
gibbering so far just to demonstrate how our notion of photography
& viewing experiences have been concealed by the social
“symbolization.” Actually, Feng Yan’s “destructive” measures are
meant to “unveil”
Now the question is: when we dropped the “map & compass”, we
face the instinctive unrest & fear in his forest of“meaning”
formed by images. This unrest & fear originate from the human
awe for the unknown, and in the long history of socialization, we
have grown accustomed to evading this fear by closely affiliating
individuality to collective experience. Feng Yan’s “meaning” is to
plunge us into this danger again & let us explore the fun of
adventure willingly or unwillingly.
Once a cinematographer, his pictures would naturally stir people
with the impulse for literary narration while these mundane and
drama free segmented pictures would block any attempt for literary
narration. So the viewer is no longer the above all “narrative
subject.” In linguistic study, people feel the natural superiority
over nature simply because everything is the object for narration by
people as the subject. Man’s superiority develops from the process
of turning this narrative possibility into reality. When Feng Yan
breaks this “language” myth with object as the “material” for
“discourse” no longer submits to the “linguistic” logic; it has
gained a quality of “being itself ” that is equal to the subject
personality.
He also means to let the “meaning” drift away from the sealed
memory of time as to make the viewers feel the surge of returning
these images back to their own time line. Therefore, his objects
have put on, in addition to the three dimensions of space, the 4th
dimension of time and the 5th dimension of “meaning.”
He lets us devote our attention to the object itself &
experience the miraculous process of how these “objects” transform
into “images.”
Aug. 28, 2005
( Translated by Cui
Yang) |