MP/VISUAL RESEARCH - ROBERT FRANK

Robert Frank’s The Americans was first published on May 15, 1958 by Robert Delpire in Paris. It featured 83 of Frank’s photographs taken in America in 1955 and 1956, accompanied by writings in French about American political and social history selected by Alain Bosquet. The first English edition of The Americans was published in 1959 by Grove Press in New York. It presented the same photographs as the Delpire edition, however a text by Jack Kerouac replaced the French writings. The book begins with Kerouac’s introduction, followed by Frank’s photographs in the same sequence as the Delpire edition. On the left-hand pages are short captions from Frank, which describe the location. Armed with a camera and a fresh cache of film and bankrolled by a Guggenheim Foundation grant, Robert Frank crisscrossed the United States during 1955 and 1956. The photographs he brought back form a portrait of the country at the time and hint at its future. He saw the hope of the future in the faces of a couple at city hall in Reno, Nevada, and the despair of the present in a grimy roofscape. He saw the roiling racial tension, glamour, and beauty, and, perhaps because Frank himself was on the road, he was particularly attuned to Americans' love for cars. Funeral-goers lean against a shiny sedan, lovers kiss on a beach blanket in front of their parked car, young boys perch in the back seat at a drive-in movie. A sports car under a drop cloth is framed by two California palm trees; on the next page, a blanket is draped over a car accident victim's body in Arizona.  - Quoted from publisher.

I knew this book from Tate Modern’s Storyline by Robert Frank.  That was quite a few years before my photography study.  I was bewildered by the images.  It is only until much later that I come to realize I really appreciate Robert Frank and this book.  I bought one only today...

MP/VISUAL RESEARCH - LIU ZHENG

Since 1994, Chinese Liu Zheng has been working on his ambitious photographic project The Chinese. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations. His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying.

I found his work quite bizarre two three years ago.   I don’t quite agree this is a good interpretation of the title “The Chinese”, well, my version of “The Chinese”.  On the other hand, photography especially documentary photography is always subjective.  The only thing I hate is a photographer try to photography things to grab viewers eye balls, and I don’t mind other photographers have different view point from me at all.  

Liu commented:   I have worked during an exceptional period (from roughly 1990 to the present) of radical and unprecedented change in the Chinese contemporary art scene. These years have also seen a new level of maturity in Chinese art circles. The shock waves of Deng’s policies of opening and reform and their effect on peoples’ ideology is fully reflected in contemporary artworks from the mainland. Photography, like other forms of art, went through a period of hard yet much-needed transition. During these years, the dominant role of news photography in China began to crumble, and the importance of traditional salon photography was also significantly weakened. Humanized and personalized works started to have an impact. It was in this context that, in 1996, I started the private journal New Photo with some of my friends. We all felt that a new era was coming. I was driven by a powerful intellectual force, which slowly evolved into a set of personal beliefs. For many years, it was this set of personal beliefs that helped me overcome numerous difficulties. The Chinese is the fruit of my own personal struggle.

MP/VISUAL RESEARCH - BRUNO BARBEY

From 1961 to 1964, Barbey spent much time in Italy trying to capture the spirit of the nation through his photography. Barbey's subjects have the archetypical profiles that are instantly recognizable from the popular Italian films of Pasolini, Visconti, and Fellini - the modern commedia dell'arte of the ragazzi, nuns, aristocracy, carabinieri, priests, beggars, prostitutes, and mafiosi. 

Capturing the spirit of a nation is an audacious target.  The album “The Italian” has 95 images.  I don’t like documentary photography in general, but it is still eye catching to me.  The images are all about Italian people.  They are the environmental portraiture.  Bruno took these photos a couple of years after Frank’s The American.  It is very different from Frank’s style.  I knew of this album a more than 10 years ago when I started to look around different kind of photography.  The title inspired me.  A camera to capture the spirit of a nation...

MAJOR PROJECT - IDEAS & CONTEXTUALISING 3

I am always fascinated by the sky and clouds.  I spend weeks in the sky every year and each time I look out of the cabin window I can look for a long time purifying my mind, contemplating something or nothing, being fascinated by the sublime, getting the visual pleasure of the always different colour and scenes...  Like on the ground there is a horizon, in the sky there is another ‘horizon‘ the border line between the lower sky and the universe sky - I don’t know how I could express this in English better.  The manmade language seems not have many words or expressions on the upper sky probably because we have been living on the ground and we are sent to the sky by the technology only in the last 150 years.  How is related to China?  I fly around China in the sky, the vast subliminal scene reminds me the grand philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi,  the infinity in the far away engages me with many thoughts from Chinese philosophy, the different scenes in the sky evokes me thought on the thousands years of history of this country, the ebb and flow of this nation, the colorful and prosperous period and the dark and miserable ages.  The sky gives me tranquility as opposed to the noisy terrestrial, the sky gives me eternity as opposed to the daily ephemeral in the ground life. Every day we work and live to deal with all sorts of situations, we try to develop and live better our life and society, but the sky is always the sky it is there billions of years.

MAJOR PROJECT - IDEAS & CONTEXTUALISING 2

The speed of development does not merely transform the world.  It becomes the world.  China’s economy developed fast in the last two decades.  The speed changed people’s value, country’s culture, and nation’s landscape, etc.  Even though I hate to be un-original, as too many people jump on a bus or car and make projects out of the journey, I found I express my version of understanding well with my way of photography in a fast running car around China.  The car was driven around cities, suburbans, rural areas, at day time and at night.  The fast car, the fast growing economy, fast growing country, and beyond this.  I recorded the physical image and with the blurry traces of the light, it not only serves the literal mirroring of the speed but also questions the speed, the impact, and the phenomenology of current China situation.

MAJOR PROJECT - IDEAS & CONTEXTUALISING 1

I don’t know how many times each Chinese has to sit in front of a red cloth to take a portrait photo for how many official papers.  I have no idea when this red background kicked in as in other countries normally the background colour is not red.  Chinese likes red and therefore red is used extensively hence becomes a traditional colour.  As institutional or official images take this red colour from the tradition, red becomes a signifier for these institutional governance or rules.  The government must have billions of passport photos like this and they are all stored and archived.  China has a big population and the recent economic upcoming resulted from this abundance of labour.  Made in China becomes a phenomenon.  Lots of comments and perceptions on this phenomenon.  Lots of them are political.  Some of them are negative on this phenomenon with the conspiracy theory against China as a threat.  Some of them are neutral.  Some of them are with humane concern on the living standard of these labours.  People in the west use products made in China every day.  Do they care what is behind this phenomenon?  Do they care what happens in China and what these workers are doing and living?  From inside China, the government, institution, company and factory have the Chinese way of controlling and managing people.  This is the heritage from the communist era, and of course from the two thousands of years of feudal system, and from the ancient Chinese philosophy too.  I put people’s portrait with red cloth behind to signify ‘something’ and I turn the sitter around to conceal the face to raise or arouse questions.

MAJOR PROJECTS - KICKS OFF / SHOW AND TELL

The summer seems end today.  The new term starts with “Show and Tell”.  Everyone started to discuss something, anything, an object, an image, to start the journey of the Major Project.  It is always fascinating to hear what other peers ideas.  Sarah Doerfel’s idea attracted me the most this time.  She plans to use his stock images taken from her daily life about London urban especially the buildings and road.  She combines the form cohesion from each image and montage an endless work.  The idea is that she is fascinated by the ever-flowing London life, the vibrancy and dynamics of London, by making such an endless montage of London, she poses the lots of ideas and questions.  Her idea reminds me of John Stezaker.