Photo Journal Monday: Gao Shang
Chapter 9 He swallowed up memory © Gao Shang
All images and text by Gao Shang
Honesty And Disguise
I want to tell you a story. It may be a scary story. It may be a love story or a story about one's life. It has no sound, it won't move, it just hangs there quietly to tell you its story.
Every picture, every paragraph, every painting is real. When they are put together, their meaning becomes a disguise. Every fragment and text has become a new fictional identity, 'diver's letter', 'unreliable descriptor', 'disappeared horizon' or other chapters, which have been put together again and have the meaning and identity in the new fictional space.
Chapter 1 Unreliable Narrator © Gao Shang
I hope the audience can see interesting works and stories outside the traditional form of photography. It is not a real story. It will tell you its content like fragments of novels or movies. Different fictional characters come together to form an honest story. There is no doubt about the story and authenticity of traditional photography, but in the new photography era of the digital age, can we change our thinking to express some of our inner thoughts.
I want to use photography to write a novel like a fictional writer, and use different scenes to spell out the chapters and contents of the story. When we look at literary works, we will have a sense of picture of the content in our mind. If photography is an art form that captures the instant, we can also capture the sense of picture in our mind. When we face the noisy environment around us, I hope this novel written by photography can bring you some stress and relaxation. It will bring you some belonging and satisfaction like your pillow book or a tired Night movie. Sit down and open a chapter to watch it and read it, because it will tell you a story.
Chapter 2 The Lost Horizon © Gao Shang
From the beginning of my study, I will be more fascinated by the concept of literal expression and express concrete entity concepts with abstract words. When I was growing up, I usually liked reading literary novels. While reading, the sense of picture will interact in my mind. I always wonder whether images can also be displayed in literary narration. When I shoot materials, I will think about whether they can be related? Can a new scene be formed? When we break the traditional concept and bondage of "photos", they will sprout new meaning and value, and their new identity and meaning will make them more precious. When we get rid of the shackles, they will naturally form together freely like words.
I began to think about the image correlation of another spatial dimension. We have been discussing the relationship of space, including square, cold and warm, plane and three-dimensional, head up and multi perspective. The world is multidimensional The blending relationship of image, text and music. Words and music will express richer content through images. Similarly, experimental images can get rid of the constraints of tradition on the plane through the combination of music and words.
Chapter 3 Letters from Divers © Gao Shang
When I returned to the concrete from the abstract process, the creation began to find a different change. This impact completely broke the abstract expression I had to adhere to before. I have been looking for a stronger and more direct expression. When I entered the image world, it began to let me climb to the highest mountain. I began to use collage to find the correlation between images and directly extract images from the surface. The change of this way makes the picture more realistic and story. However, in the process of creation, I need to rebuild a shooting material library. Most of the image materials come from my life, which is very difficult. These valuable images are accumulated by me, and in the actual creation, I keep looking for the connection between images day and night, I extracted their independent individuals to find their relationship with another independent individual. This way of finding is more difficult. On the way of creation, I added a large number of words, which made the overall content more storytelling, and added more independent roles, so that they can be more vividly displayed. I hope it can be displayed like the chapter catalogue of a book. These stories may come from my various dreams or my observation and experience of daily life. This feeling brought by virtual and reality is very strong. I am very happy to link these two spaces together, making a subtle connection between them.
Chapter 4 He destroyed everything © Gao Shang
Disguise is actually a kind of honesty. The role we play in society is also a thousand people and a thousand faces, saying different things to different people. But the important thing is that you know you are pretending. When you know this, you are also honest with yourself. On the contrary, we talk about honesty, but it contains a lot of disguise. Most of the time, our honesty is never honest enough, because it is always disguised.
There has always been an obvious and strong confrontation between virtual and reality. Between the two, I chose a more honest way to show the pictures I recorded. I cut and enlarge them to let you see the authenticity of the picture records to a greater extent - this is honest; But when expressing, I selectively disguise their identity and meaning, which means that it has changed its identity and appeared in a new role. This is a new sensory way for you and me. At the same time, it is also a rebellious spirit against the meaning of traditional photography in viewing and expression. I want to find the image meaning and irreplaceable value in the so-called "honest record".
Chapter 5 Noise of Time © Gao Shang
Pictures will always convey the information they want to express like words, but different from words, their camouflage will be too strong. The beginning and idea of this work is to constantly fight against the tradition and even deny the meaning of the tradition. Only in the confrontation can you find the meaning you want to express. In the choice of picture materials, we should first look at its own meaning. When we experience and feel the situation that did not happen at that time, we will naturally balance its positioning in the image society. When I go to shoot, I will naturally have standards for the image information I want to use. Many times, it is more like there are some things I want to describe in my mind, and I will record them when thinking. The later stage is just a way of arrangement. The more important thing is to feel the temperature and time of the images recorded at the moment, so that the created things will have spiritual images and speak. Compared with honest expression, I am always exploring the purity of the images, and I will always express the images honestly.
