Abstract: If an exhibition seeks answers via posing questions, then which questions does the "Confusing Public and Private: The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial" need to ask the audience? In my view, this edition of the biennial centers on a question which has entangled and coerced consistently from the invention of photography to the present: the ambiguous relationship between public and private. As such, in the midst of this complicated relationship, this text will, from a new kind of daily writing and expressive media, focus on the intimate connection between photography and social media, exploring the role it plays in the day-to-day space between public and private, from here exploring photography's potential to bring about "linguistic changes" to people's way of thinking. As such, for this biennial, we will imbed photography in a more ordinary, democratic, social, or even more “substantial" realistic circumstances, integrating a complex organizational form. Using this as a starting point, we can imagine, reflect, and explore: what kind of photographic world do we live in? What will be connection between this photographic world, the future, and us? In what sort of linguistic environment will we curate? Today, the only thing we can be certain of is it's uncertain.
Keywords: daily writing[1], cellphone photography, social media, artificial intelligence
Approximately 2500 years ago, China's first scientist, Mo-tse, did the world's first experiment with camera obscura which is recorded in his Mo ching:
The inverted[2] image in a "collecting point" or "treasure house" is inverted by an intersecting point that collected the (rays of) light.
An illuminated person shines as if he was shooting forth (rays).The bottom part of the man becomes the top part (of the image) and the top part of the man becomes the bottom part (of the image). The foot of the man (sends out, as it were) light (rays, some of which arc) hidden below (i.e. strike below the pinhole) (but others of which) form its image at the top. The head of the man (sends out, as it were) light (rays, some of which are) hidden above (i.e. strike above the pinhole) (but others of which) form its image at the bottom. At a position farther or nearer (from the source of light, reflecting body, or image) there is a point (the pinhole) which collects the (rays of) light, so that the image is formed (only from what is permitted to come through the collecting-place.[3]
This description is mankind's first scientific explanation of photographic transmission and aligned with the principles of contemporary photo optics. Slightly later comes record of Artistotle using a camera obscura to observe a solar eclipse. However, camera obscura had essentially no direct influence on the art of Chinese painting[4]. However in Western art history after the Renaissance, master painters all used lens and camera obscura techniques to depict imagery on canvas or paper, forming a kind of unrecognized "secret knowledge"[5]. In this sense, camera obscura and pinhole camera technique had application in the visual arts, thus providing vital technological support for western realist painting. During the first half of the 19th century, following western scientific progress, the traditional hand-painted method of capturing time and details was finally supplanted by a new, more scientific visual method. Photography was invented——bringing about tremendous changes to visual arts for humankind. Susan Sontag believed the golden age of photography was the 20 years after its invention. Humankind embraced photography with unprecedented ambition and passion, attempting to find every possible application for this legendary medium. Photography from this period is was so vibrant that László Moholy Nagy put forward this famous, audacious statement: “The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen." Photography of that moment seem to be a "verb."
The 3rd Beijing Photo Biennial, Exhibition View, Photo by Li Biao
Returning to China, the day-to-day writing and expression of the ancients relied entirely on brush pen dipped in ink to commit words to paper. Only an elite few could be called "calligraphers" and those with additional artistic talent were known as "literati painters." As such, there is a hypothesis in painting theory that "painting and calligraphy are of common origin." This also forms the logic behind the shift of Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy from daily writings to a medium of elite expression. Today, if we try to recollect, when was the last time you picked up a pen to write? What did you write? Was it your signature on a credit card receipt? Or did you jot down a phone number?
In 2017, Rasa Smite and others curated an exhibition entitled "Data Drift" which pointed out: "If painting is the art of the classical age and photography is the art of the modern period, then data visualization is the artistic medium of this era." On the one hand, in today's view, fine art photography as an art form has already become "classical;" but on the other hand, it provides a vast domain to disseminate, extend, and involve multidisciplinary research. In reality, its speed of propagation is fast, making it challenging for people to grasp the unique connotation of photography—at least this has been the case thus far. [6]
With the changes brought about by the arrival of smart phones, virtual keyboards and virtual camera shutters (complete with the simulated sound of the shutter clicking) have become a new form of daily writing for humankind. Will this bring about a new system of artistic media? In a new photographic age, we must confront the reality of a medium that has already been clearly established. First, there was the transformation from reading images in print to reading on screens. In the past, when we viewed photos, it was in an album or by holding them directly in hand. Now, almost everyone browses or uploads information via a cellphone screen the size of one's palm. On this screen, we write, read, watch, express, and explore the unknown. Next, following the widespread use of Instagram, WeChat, and other social media, cellphone photography presents a new form of daily writing and expression for humankind, essentially redefining photography. It not only changed our reading habits and viewing experience, it altered our means of visual expression. Just as Steven Shore summarized, Instagram has a kind of diaristic, brief glance, visual jotting, one-liner, notational aspect, which runs parallel to daily, emotional chunks of time and "memory fragments" that continuously influence our habits of expression and ways of communicating. As such, the daily writings and expressions of humankind have already shifted from the written word to image uploads. By viewing the inundation of photography shared via social media, we can experience the whole world's estrangement, poetry, assumption, and metaphor; observing and perceiving the lives and existences of others, sometimes losing ourselves in this vast empire of photographic imagery.
Photography brings us closer to a world without images, that is to say a world of pure representation. People say that, among the inundation of images, the truth disappears. But people forget that in the evolution of reality, the image has already gradually disappeared.[7]
—Jean Baudrillard
Entering the age of cellphone photography and social media, photography has become further disenchanted. At this point, we already have a hard time imagining that in the 1950s "The Family Of Man" exhibition at MoMA could attract more than 9 million visitors; and a photo exhibition in Beijing in April 1979 could attract tens of thousands of visitors.[8] It might be better to say that the number of people who take photos today far exceeds those who attend photo exhibitions, rather than state that ordinary audiences have difficulty differentiating between photographs hanging in an art museum and those photos they've captured with their cellphones (aside from the resolution or digital definition of the image). When analyzing or critiquing photography on screen, it almost seems as though we no longer require print photos at all. It's a similar situation to how movie attendance subsided after the spread of in-home television sets. Thus, the living room and the movie theatre, cellphone photography and exhibition photography, form a similar public vs. private corollary relationship. Does this signify the formation of a confused referential relationship between surface and depth, material and method, existence and spirit? What caused all of this to occur? Did the development of independent media bring about the death of fine art photography? Did the proliferation of imagery make humankind numb to photography? Or is it that photography exhibitions are insufficient to inspire and elevate spirits? Or that contemporary photography is increasingly highbrow and disconnected from the masses? Could it be that the latent potential of photography as an artistic medium has already reached its limit? Objective reasoning aside, is it time for humans to do some self-reflection? Times have changed, but should we change with them? We've become impatient; we no longer understand how to use internal methods to explore the unknown; we are no longer captivated by profound, static imagery. Our knowledge and comprehension of photography has also changed. This change is most directly visible through the contrast between how every generation first comes into contact with the camera (and by extension, photography as whole).[9]
If we subscribe to Pierre Bourdieu's 1960s conceptualization of photography as "middle-brow art" between high-brow and low-brow or a "bourgeoise artistic interest" then clearly nowadays the "popularization" of photography is complete. Thus we discover, fine art photography seems to become more and more calcified, or has shrunk in size at the very least. "Photograph" has gone from being a verb to now more of a noun. Coincidentally, perhaps this can answer why around the world for about the last twenty years or so, we haven't seen the emergence of new photographic masters.10 [10]Another trend of note is that Steven Shore has been captivated by Instagram for the past few years, so much so that Bard College, where he has been teaching for 28 years, has started offering a course in Instagram photography. His retrospective exhibition at MoMA this year even ended with a group of iPads displaying Instagram photography. When everyone's cellphone cameras (point-and-shoot cameras) and social platforms are homogenized, it does become truly difficult to suss out the difference between the images in the Instagram feed of a master photographer and that of an ordinary person. However, if you look closely, you'll see that he is attempting to explore and perceive a new form of photographic language.
So how can photography once again return to its "verb" state? What we need to do is examine this "noun" in a new technological and cultural environment. But when we consider some ways of thinking about photography, as expressed through contemporary art practice, such as Richard Mosse's[11] Incoming[12], we seem to glimpse the hope of photography once again becoming a "verb," but this "verb" is entirely different than before. Throughout this transition, how can photography separate itself from serving only as a way of thinking and rather, become the critical point of orientation for our thinking about this transition? Perhaps it's as Baudrillard stated: It's art that devours the photo rather than the opposite.[13] Consequently, perhaps it is time we liberate photography, allowing it escape from behind the barrier of art to start from scratch; going further, we should re-examine photography from within an expanded field of reality, history, and culture. Perhaps a new photography, entirely different from the old, will emerge: no longer the physical and virtual meaning of photography, but an abstract photographic thought or concept; or even a spirit or essence, which will be used as the new logical starting point to develop an entirely new appearance for photography, bringing about new enlightenment for humankind. Writing this, we seem to be pushing forward in an ideal state, but the complexity of the problem lies in that photography's boundary-breaking pluralism has caused us to firmly cling to our sense of photography, and it will prove extremely difficult to change. Simultaneously, traditional artistic media (canvas, pigment, ink, brush, carving tools, camera, etc.) are currently being replaced by the media of the everyday (all the articles of daily use you can think of, including your mobile phone).
Let's return to 2500 years ago, to the time when Mo-tse and Aristotle discovered camera obscure or when Plato thought of the "Allegory of the Cave." In Plato's view, art at that time existed merely as imitation or representation. In the "utopia" of his imagination, among art and image, shadow, illusion, and mirage were ranked lowest. By the time we reach what Sontag called the "Golden Age of Photography," photography established a standard of life-like representation; from here, art cast off the mandate of imitation and deviated from mirror image, gradually achieving liberation. In Arthur C. Danto's eyes, in the 1970s sculpture and photography changed the core consciousness of art. After that, everything became possible.[14]Any object can be considered art. Now, with the proper technological conditions, we welcome the "cloud" (wherein human consciousness is uploaded to cloud processors), and the miraculous moment when artificial intelligence and human intelligence are finally compatible, the so-called "Technological Singularity," will soon be a reality. In this midst of this Datascape, AI will very likely develop its own unique emotional and aesthetic sense, entirely distinct from that of humankind. Computational vision will have enormous impact on the visual arts of humanity. Will "contemporary art" welcome a transformation alongside the union of man and machine; or will it meet its end? Quite possibly, we're already counting down the final days of "humankind," we will soon become "posthuman."[15] Everything in the future is unpredictable; perhaps it will be as the English title of this exhibition hints: there may, in fact, be "troubled intentions ahead."
Written by Cai Meng
The original article is published in the 4th issue of “The World of Art” in 2018
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[1] ”Daily writing” refers to the writing we need to do on a daily basis related to any number of things. (Qiu Zhenzhong: Richang shuxie: shufashi de chonggou qijita), Zhongguo (Chinese Calligraphy), 2nd edition, 2014, p.108) Those writings with artistic ambition behind them, such as good handwriting or calligraphy practice, those which practice writing for the sake of producing a work of calligraphy, do not fall within this scope.
[2] In this case dao meaning “arrive” or “until” is an interchangeable homophone with dao meaning “inverted.”
[3] If two figures stand on a flat mirrored surface on the ground, the image in the mirror will be inverted. Owing to distance, the reflection in the mirror will appear smaller than the actual figure, which is caused by the limited region of which the mirror is capable of reflecting. When light rays hit a figure, if the figure is below, the reflection will be projected above; while if the reflection is projected below, the figure must be above. The foot area blocks the light below it, which causes the reflection above; the head blocks the light from above, thus causing the reflection below. When light rays pass through a pinhole, projected upon a wall near or far, it will form an inverted image. Mozi, Fang Yong (translator), 2011, 333, p 353.
[4] Chance examples of realistic representation among Five Dynasties and Song Dynasty painters are perhaps related to this. Examples include: Xu Xi's Xuezhutu (Snow Bamboo) from the collection of the Shanghai Museum.
[5] David Hockney's Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of Old Masters offers in-depth, thorough analysis of this point.
[6] Company, David. Photography and Cinema: Nanjing, Nanjing University Press, 2008, pg 2.
[7] Baudrillard, Jean. Vanishing Point, Xiang Zairong (translator), Vanishing Techniques: Photography of Jean Baudrillard exhibition catalogue, curated by Fei Dawei. Beijing, Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, May 2012, pg 9.
[8] In 1979, launched by Wang Zhiping, Li Xiaobin and others, the “Nature Society Man” exhibition opened in Beijing's Zhongshan Park; the first unofficial, independent photography exhibition since 1949, which emerged from the “April Photography Collective.” The exhibition had more than 160,000-180,000 attendees, averaging 5000-6000 visitors daily.
[9] I still clearly remember the 1960s Xinfu camera in my childhood home—it was my toy. So much so that I broke the shutter twice. While today, my daughter at just 6 months old stares curiously at the cellphone being used to photograph her.
[10] Of course, not excluding the possibility that the author is myopic, ignorant, and ill-informed.
[11] Richard Mosse was born in Ireland in 1980. In 2011, Mosse was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. On the heels of his crimson series of the Congo, Infra, he was made a Magnum Agency photographer, overturning Magnum's black and white documentary style. His new work from 2017, Incoming (three screen video projection) is an immersive multi-channel image installation. Mosse collaborated with composer Ben Frost and cinematographer Trevor Tweeten. The artist used an advanced thermal imaging system and boundary imaging technology to produce the work—capturing things more than 30 kilometers away and recording the relative temperature difference of heat signals. This equipment is classified by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations as an advanced weapon system. Mosse used this export-controlled camera to against its intended purpose to produce a work of art about refugees.
[12] Incoming refers to military tactical language to express enemy artillery fire. It is the phrase shouted when an enemy missile or antitank grenade is thrown into your camp.
[13] Baudrillard, Jean. Vanishing Point, Xiang Zairong (translator), Vanishing Techniques: Photography of Jean Baudrillard exhibition catalogue, curated by Fei Dawei. Beijing, Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, May 2012, pg 11.
[14] Danto, Arthur C. What Art Is, Xia Kaifeng (translator), Beijing: Commercial Press, January 2018, 1, pg.
[15] Hayles, N.Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, Liu Yuqing (translator), Beijing: Beijing University Press, June 2017, back cover.
