Nature: Moods & Moodiness

Granted, landscape may be an overly explored subject of photography. So one daunting quest is to avoid cliches in this form of art. Such a concern is not entirely groundless: landscape photography, over a century old as it is, has yet to get out of the shadows of pictorialism and 19th-century romanticism. In everyday reality, you don't need a hard look around to notice a zealously- embraced formula that focuses on nothing but soothing, sappy and sweet to the eyes.

Can it be handled just a little differently? Our aesthetic experiences most certainly are not confined to visual satisfaction of the saccharine flavor. We are in fact endowed with the capacities of moods and emotions ready to be triggered off and unleashed upon the right signal at any give minute. The same is true when facing nature. It was thoughts like these that eventually led to the portrayal of "moods and moodiness" in my landscape work.

In shooting, there were times when I found myself drenched in the rain, covered with sleet, shivering in the chilly wind, but nevertheless thrilled by engulfing dark clouds and the last rays of the sun. Overwhelmed by nature's ability to "swing" my moods, I would just stand there, trying to feel, to touch, to soak and suck in the sensations. I could tell certain feelings oozing inside me and the urge to echo to the atmosphere. Not always explicable; but often a vague hint of "mysterious, pressing, moody", or sometimes "sullen, glum, gloomy". At other times, "intricate", "ominous", and even "spooky" seemed the more appropriate gut feelings.

Landscape photography can no doubt afford more diversified expressions.

Nature: Transfigured

This theme originated in the mid-80s when I was a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). In a way it contributed to the "cultural shock" of me being new in this country. At the school, I constantly felt the pressure to be "contemporary" in terms of my artistic expressions. Conceptualism, though still prevailing, was no longer in full swing as the main stream of fine arts. Hence, a little more breathing room for stylistic experimentations not so "politically correct".

The school prompted us to say goodbye to any established fine art traditions, while in their stead encouraging us to seek our own unique individual artistic identity. For me, a total stranger to the Western history of fine arts, there was little to break away from. But I was obliged to take action in fending off challenges like "show us something we've never seen before," and "where are you in your work?". A good start would be to "renew" my photographic exploration on familiar subject-matters, e.g., natural landscape. Unfortunately, metropolitan Chicago did not appear to be the right place for this purpose.

I turned to set my eyes on Lake Michigan and the beaches along the Lake Shore Drive. We had highly photogenic winters here with grotesque ice formations sculpted by the frozen waves. In summer, drift wood in exotic shapes were scattered around, presenting a surreal view of the beaches when the dusk set in.

I was motivated to find a new angle, one of my own. Being foreign certainly had its advantages: my "alien" sensibilities directed me to fresh points of view. I began to detect "transfiguration" in those formations and shapes and ventured to render them as such. After a while my mind's eye was so channeled that it would catch all kinds of "shape-shifters", i.e. objects suggesting an "organic" presence. To bring out their vitality I usually merged them in landscape surroundings with the help of both available light and artificial lighting.

Finally I survived my early days at SAIC*. What was more, I came to appreciate its educational motivation: Not the brainwashing I thought would inculcate the doctrines of contemporary art. Never intended this way. It was gearing up my mind to be artistic, i.e, brewing the instinct and inclination to always search for a new dimension. Happily, it has turned out to be a life-long benefit.

Nature: "Bang"

A sizable part of my work is inspired by the mighty power of nature. As a photographer I have usually witnessed its manifestation through my camera eye. However, the need for a vocal exclamation every now and then has found a reason to pop up.

On numerous occasions I have felt verbally handicapped. Every instinct in me always have vibrated to such dynamics, yet each time words came up uninspired and regrettably off the mark. I knew I was photographically conveying my "communion" with nature. Yet in a more profound sense I was locating an upscale playground for my anxiety to dramatize.

"Dramatic", "magnificent", "majestic", "grandiose", "dynamic", etc., are readily available adjectives, but in the meantime all sound too definitive.

Finally, I had to be content with a thundering "Bang".

Dream & Sixth Sense

My first few years in Chicago, like for many newcomers, cast some long shadows on my memories that would otherwise be filled with pride and excitement. Financial vulnerability, legal status and the uncertainty of tomorrow were 24/7 worries in those days. Together with other hardships, they intensified the cultural shock that alienated the environment to a point beyond unsettling and uncompromising. For someone from China to study things as "ethereal" as Western contemporary art, especially at a school like SAIC*, the stress was multiplied.

I had always been proud of myself in dealing with adversity. Yet all the stress I managed to brush aside during the day would often creep into my dreams, which up to this day I still recollect as fainted nightmarish flashes in the dark. Even though I hardly suffered insomnia and was usually a sound sleeper, more than once I dreamt of getting cornered in menacing shades, sometimes wrestling in vain with shadow-like beings. For no reason I would often sense the presence of inauspiciousness around. When the evening was descending, or in a room with the lights off, for a split second I might sometimes confuse it with dreams.

Naturally I tried to expresses all this with the camera. I used to live in an old house in Evanston, with a basement full of dust-covered furniture wreckage, household debris, crushed ducts and rusty pipes. The crooked windows with broken panes were so discolored that even the shrouding and dangling cob-webs over them looked brownish gray. Once stepping down on the creaky staircase, one would have the unmistakable impression of a horror movie scene. Here, my inner world would readily respond. For the first time "self-expression" through my art, an SAIC* cliched advocate, became touchable. The only shame was that I could not present the permeating air of mildew.

Subsequently, my acute sensibilities led to the discovery of more echoes. Weird objects, such as those collected by my SAIC* professor Barbara Crane, held a fascinating spell on me when I lived in her house. Under the influence of conceptualism, I first attempted to use them as props in deciphering thoughts and weaving concepts, but they never worked for me this way. Rather, I found myself stuck in the inclination to rely on sense. With no exceptions, every piece of my work turned out an effort to depict what I felt subconsciously. It was never explicit, definitive, much less describable, but the feel was there. Little by little, my subjects spread to scenery, night streets, tree branches - anything that happened to stir my imagination.

Sky Carving

The portfolio I sent to SAIC* for application in 1983 consisted mainly of landscapes and people I photographed in China. When I showed it at my very first meeting with fellow graduate students, the peer feedback was a long silence followed by "what can he do in Chicago?" In the end a professor broke the silence, in an attempt to cheer me up: "We've got something similar here." Skyscrapers like the Sears Tower peeping out of the fog and clouds, in his eyes resembled my mountain peaks most closely. So thank God - they might make me more at home, thus allowing for a lenient artistic adaptation.

What really caught my eyes later was the ultra modern architecture in downtown Chicago, with its ruthlessly sharp, vigorously dynamic contours framing the oppressive yet thrilling geometric blocks of glass, steel and concrete. I was almost coaxed to point my lens upward: the "cityscape" did not speak to me as much as the graphic intensity projected against the blue sky. To me this striking magnificence exemplified part of this New World's unshakable philosophy: the iron-willed human resolve and power to reshape Earth as it sees fit. As opposed to what I was accustomed to, the new rules decree the ultimate obedience to senses, logic and order - the dependence on organization and efficiency, as well as the non-stop pursuit of commercial prosperity. Strangely enough, I found all this in harmonious coexistence with their aesthetic attraction.

Sometimes I would forget I was shooting with a camera. I felt like throwing various lines, shapes and colors into a vast blue pool, mixing, agitating, and eventually whipping the whole thing into arrays of sculpture.

In the ensuing years I found the skyline of Chicago increasingly familiar and intimate, while nonetheless fresh and fascinating. Today when shooting such subjects I still recall this milestone of my "naturalization".

Long Time No See

People used to be a major subject of mine over 25 years ago. Back then I widely photographed the villagers in the rural areas of China, as well as many of the minority peoples including the Tibetans. I used to trek to the deep mountain villages and the tribes on the thinly-populated plateaus, spending weeks and months tracking local festivals and following religious rituals. At other times I wandered on the unpaved streets of the tiny towns and villages in the countryside, stealthily dodging people's attention so as to catch a glimpse of their intimate world. Most of my subjects appeared quiet, often expressionless, as if lost in thoughts if not in numbness. But I knew that wasn't the case.

Unlike my landscape work, those people photos were never accepted for exhibitions in China. On one occasion I smuggled in a few pieces only to see them flipped backwards on the wall the second day by the censorship officials. Simply put, such imagery was deemed "politically unhealthy": My "muck-raking" approach was denigrating a bright and rising Chinese society - the facial expressions always signified subdued acquiescence; the events always appeared lethargic and listless; the surroundings always shabby, filthy, poverty-ridden.... Even the public had difficulty embracing such "brutal truth": At the time everyone was trying to look forward, no one wished to be reminded of the hardships we had just left behind.

The reaction to these in the States was entirely different, needless to say. Yet I experienced another kind of disappointment. In the early 1980s China was so "outlandish" to the American public that their general knowledge and interest did not extend much beyond Peking (Beijing) and the Great Wall. The small circle of the SAIC* artists, on the other hand, would view my work in the context of Western street photography, which in the wake of Henri Cartier Bresson's "decisive moment" aimed to capture city people with distinctively different traits. My "other-worldly" images were primarily recognized for their pictorial appeals, with little regard to their cultural connotations.

This category currently contains two groups: 1. Chinese Farmers; 2. Tibetans. It is essentially a retrospective of my work in the 1980s, with a few additions taken in 2007. I also have a large body of other minority people as well as an "updated" version of their Chinese contemporary counterparts that I will post in the near future. Time has moved on. China seems totally different. But perhaps not entirely true of those in the countryside.

*SAIC: "The School of the Art Institute of Chicago"