A moment among many

I used to think that Bresson's "decisive moment" means that he would only shoot one picture for one scene, an action of creation as effective as a sniper's action of destruction. Yongquan Jin's (2009) "Red Flag Studio: Debates on CHina's Photography 1956-1959," however, has a quote from one Chinese photographer, Chen Bo by name, who had accompanied Bresson to the construction of Beijing Thirteen Tombs Reservoir on June 20, 1958 saying that "Bresson can be called a 'machine-gunner.' On the construction site, he almost shoot everything he set his eye on. He also took multiple shots of the same scene. Within four hours, he exposed seven rolls of 35mm B&W films and almost one roll of color film" (cited in Jin, 2009, p. 231). The decisive moment means actually the moment that a great photo gets exposed, not the moment a picture is shot. What a relief -- that the masters and I are the same, almost the same.

When there is leeway for clicking the shutter without coming up with a great picture, paradoxically, my soul is re-freed to the state of thinking about what leads to a great picture, then, further to asking myself what I want to express and using whatever comes out of that question as the frame within which greatness or mediocrity starts to take actual meanings.

I admit that like many other photographers, I, a lot of times, take pictures according to my emotions. I also admit that Bresson's critique of emotions vis-a-vis structures of pictures is really great. He said that "emotions -- all [people] have them. But you have to let the structure to tell" (YouTube, "The Impassioned Eye"). However, adding to the importance of the composition, it is also important to ask what relations a photographer wants to explore and expose. Social relations are many and only concentration on composition might lead to an overall lack of meanings. For example, if we, say, look at 100 pictures by Bresson and wants a general theme, what can be get apart that it is a great eye feast.

All themes are themes of social relations. I desire to devote my time into several themes and use these themes as the guiding motives to ponder on specific social relations that contribute to the large themes. This way seems to me to be more systematic and thought-provoking -- to the photographer himself. Indeed, did Adams talk about "pre-conceptualization" of any picture he took? While he concentrated on the visual aspect as well, isn't it fun to think within a larger social setting about the more general themes of social relations before actual pictures and compositions are thought of.

Just my piece of Turkey (Nov. 22, 2012, Thanksgiving). No one can deny Bresson. I am still his ardent fan. 

Have been talking too much? Have a drink? 

Training to look

This is not Marx with bazooka, although that will be equally intriguing. This is Miroslav Tichy with one of his self-made cameras. Out of trash, antithetical to all the dazzling megapixel ones, the old man's camera is laughing at us: that we have paid too much attention to the media and forgot about looking. In what ways should we train our "look"?

When all the frustrations of apertures, speeds, focuses, lights, filters, angles, . . . have come to no salvation of mediocrity, to concentrate on the essence of looking means, for one thing, to forget worrying about how many functions your cameras have and how expensive they are. 

Laughable as it is, it is 100% designed and crafted by this old man -- for the most sensual looking. How to look at your subjects and be certain about the pictures you want to take seems to be a much better subject to think about for every photographer, and also not only limited to photographers. And the results (See the picture right below) seem to cast serious doubts on the cameras we each have in our hands: Do we need to spend what we have spent for the cameras that nevertheless do not seem to excel this old man's, judging by the results? Are we using the expensive cameras to hide our deep insecurity of our inability/mediocrity? With all the worries of the control details and technical know-how, buttons to push and wheels to turn, we seem to be further away from the question of looking, from why and how we need to be closer to our photo subjects.  There always seems to be something that hinders us from coming closer to the subject -- caressing it with our minds and hands, desire and love, contemplation and action. 

Here comes the old man, an antihero of a commodity-fetishized world, quenching us inside his trash camera world and forcing us to rethink the potentials of whatever we have in our hands and our minds. With his old eyes and old desires, he is looking at the subject, single-mindedly. At the least attentive and unnoticed moment, he triggers the click.

Nothing to do but art

Writing a blog without comments is like talking on an island at night. But not a bad thing: If no one is going to hear me, it is good to let one's feelings out. My writing self and my photo-taking self are always lonely, but the photo-taking self is even more so, with the obsolete film cameras that I love. Everyone can look at the cameras and ask: "Oh, you still shoot film?" "Are you a professional?" "Where do you get the film?"

Frequently, my questions to myself always come when I am peeping through the hole of the viewfinder: "What meanings do I create by pushing the button now?" "Should I push it now or wait or pan my camera for a different angle?" "What stories do I want to tell?" "In what ways are the pictures coming out connected with my feelings?" In the process in which I want my pictures to tell a story I see in the world, pushing or not pushing the button resembles the old "to be or not to be . . ."

This world has its many orders. Showing such orders by showing people pictures is not an easy thing. Exposures then both literally mean the process when light reaches the film and a way of making clear the general and abstract rules of the orders by showing such rules visually. I have, in recent two years, stopped fancying big head shots with wonderful bokeh, or concentrating on the visual structure of each single shot. Instead, individual shots must be considered, quite often before the pictures are taken, through a structure/frame through which I desire to show the stories/orders/rules I see in the world with my attitudes in it.

What do such an order look like? This is a question that I need to constantly ask myself. Also, each time I think about this question, it pushes me to think the order's visual representation: In what ways does the social order become concretized, particularized, and thingfied into either an object or a slice of social relations?

Before I submerge into this theoretical sink, it might be interesting to talk about my only photo class. When I was at BG, the photo instructor assigned us photo sessions with themes such as "time," "strength" "memory," . . . Interestingly, at that time, I was reading Foucault and de Certeau and I was asking myself: Ha! This is interesting! How do we shoot a theme of "Practices of Everyday Life," "Knowledge and Power," "The Order of Things," "Discipline and Punish"? Interestingly, I found that when these questions are framed within a visual context, they become so different and they almost push an ethnographic field research attitude/incentive so that I begin to think about the material/social manifestations of otherwise more abstract and more theoretical orders. Later on (several years later), I grew with more knowledge in materialist theorization, finding empirical data and evidences start to mean more to me. Of course, for a summer course of photography, I did not venture much more than finishing the mere minimum of the photo assignments and did not explore, except for mentally, the wonders of realizing visually "Discipline and Punish." However, those thoughts have provoked me to see connections between photography and academic writings as connected in many ways. Frequently, my understandings of one inform the other, by raising new questions, finding new paths for realizing, and seeing new possibilities for new projects.

Currently, a storm is brewing now that I am going back to China and to visit Chinese villages, I plan to do a photo project on urban and rural spaces, urban and rural practices of everyday life (at last). Since an estimated population of 225.42 million peasants have been working in places other than their hometowns at the end of 2008 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2008), it is really important to see how the rural spaces have changed and how the rural population has impacted Chinese urbanization processes. Important questions, but also very big and vague. The same kind of brain exercises needs to be done to link these questions into their visual formations of social relations. There are many interesting and potentially heartbreaking pictures that I have been informed. For instance, my parents told me that in our village, one village member had had a well dug and he had been making money by selling water for irrigation. Before, the village commune pays him a reduced annual price and he makes sure all village people have water to drink by filling the water tower once or twice a week. Later on, because of the price issue, this guy, the one who drew the well, decided not to supply any water unless it is from individual payment of individual household, with a raised price. Since household containers are all too small, each household has to dig deep into their own yard to make a household reservoir so that it is worth the while to pay and get the water from a long way. Thus, the underground water pipe system of the village is nullified and now, each household will make its appointment with the well owner to get water. And they pay more than 2,000 yuan to have their individual reservoir constructed and another 100 yuan for the pump. Since my parents only occasionally live in the village, they asked our neighbor so that we can share their reservoir with them. How do they do that? Easy: They have a hole in the wall so that the pump of my neighbor can pump the water into our house. A wall of separation and a pipe of connection through the wall will be a telling picture of such a war on water. This is just one of the many that I am going to do. But you have got the idea, when I have a whole story to tell, then, each picture becomes a visual element connected to the textures of the whole story. Photography, then, manifests to me its strong sense of being used as a genre of "exposing" social relations, inequity, injustice, and power differences at large. I do not think this is too long from the moment that I decide that I will, eventually, do a visual project of "Discipline and Punish" -- You never know!!!

For deconstruction and reconstruction to go on, hand in hand, like lovers, in the first morning walk after days of departure, I must shoot.