Something
In
Common

--The Exhibit by Chinese American Photographers

by Heather Snider

San Francisco has a long and rich history of photography as a respected art medium. Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Minor White, and Dorothea Lange are just a few of the pioneering photographers who lived and worked in San Francisco throughout the last century. But today the city is also home to many internationally recognized contemporary photographers who continue to work in traditional black and white as well as color and more contemporary/post-modern applications of the medium. With photographers such as Richard Misrach, Michael Kenna, Ruth Bernhard, and Todd Hido continuing San FranciscoÕs legacy as one of photographyÕs most important cities, San Francisco presents an exciting and perhaps at times daunting field of inspiration for any young photographer. Some say it is the bright pacific light that attracts the photographic eye; others claim it is the bohemian, open atmosphere that encourages artistic pursuits. What ever the reason may be, San Francisco is a Mecca for any lover of photography and it is no surprise that the Chinese Artist Network found the venue for its first major exhibition, Something In Common, here.

The work of these photographers (or this selection of works from the Chinese Network) is not about being Chinese nor for the Chinese-Americans is it about a specifically cross-cultural perspective. Rather, the works presented in this show are part of an historically based dialogue in the medium of traditional black and white photography that transcends ethnicity and nationality and delves into a visual poetry of personal experience and self-expression.The works of these 5 photographers are classic in their technique as well as in the themes they present. These young photographers are not grappling with the ideas of post-modernism. They are instead attracted to more traditional 20th century photographic themes and especially to this traditionÕs attention to the technical facets of the black and white medium. The influences are readily apparent in much of the work shown here, especially in the younger photographers, and we can easily find glimpses seen with much the same eye as Marc Riboud, W. Eugene Smith, Graciela Iturbide, and Josef Koudelka among others. But these references are not over-bearing, and a knowledge of photographic heritage is a strength when an artist is able to show, as is evident in these works, an Acknowledgment of the work of their predecessors while simultaneously expressing the uniqueness of their own fresh voices.

It is the youngest photographer of the group whose works are for me the most classically beautiful images in the show. Yi-shu Wang was born in Lanzhou, 1973 and now lives in Guangzhou. Within his body of work he combines striking graphic elements with poetic and metaphorical content. His photograph, The Crow, uses a flattened picture space to create the playful illusion of a birdÕs wing dancing along an electrical wire. This majestic bird exemplifies the strength and power of nature. It is a wild creature, sliding through an industrial setting which, though no person appears in the image, suggests a strong presence of mankind; especially in his capacity to industrialize and build upwards against the forces of nature. One wonders if the bird is a threatening presence or if it itself is threatened. The darkened sky behind the bird provides the foreboding tone that this image hinges upon, implying a more ominous interpretation of its meaning. Is the bird escaping or is it in fact trapped, caught amidst the tangle of wires man has erected in the landscape. Perhaps the bird represents the human spirit, or the spirit of nature, rising above and hopefully beyond the reach of the more ugly side of civilization. But at the last moment the birdÕs spirit is afraid to let go of this last slight touch or connection with the vitality of man, its desire for escape thwarted by the inevitability of entrapment.

Birds are again the symbolic messengers in the photograph shown World Trade Center by Mi Zhou. The birds are at first overshadowed by the profound significance of the two buildings behind them. The political and social implications of what happened that fateful day in September continue to play out and will undoubtedly do so for many years to come. The fact that this image was made by the photographer without any knowledge of what would eventually transpire makes the image all the more poignant. Even before September 11th, the World Trade Center towers were a part of everyday experience for the multitude of residents and visitors in New York, representing all that is powerful, and eventually vulnerable, in this city where people come to carve out their destinies. Before the events of September 11th, I would have said that the birds, the trees, and even the swirling mist around the buildings, were symbols for nature itself which the triumphant arrogance of mankind tends to neglect. But with all that has happened since then, my eyes cannot help but transform the birds into planes, shooting through the air and penetrating what were before deemed to be indestructible monuments to civilization and capitalism. The misty clouds recall the smoking fires of the buildings before they eventually tumbled to earth. The strong black diagonal lines that surround the image are like the cameraÕs shutter window, opening for an instant to reveal a moment in history. Then they will close, open again, and the buildings will be gone. Photography has the unique power to immortalize a moment in time. While a work of art remains the same, the culture and history around it change, and in doing so change the meaning of art. It is this mutability that makes art so vital to our cultureÕs understanding of itself.

Meanwhile, beneath the towering structures on the surface of Manhattan, MI Zhou finds a completely different perspective of life in New York City. His photograph In Search of Sound portrays a moment taken from the teeming activity of the New York subway. MI Zhou, was born in Wuxi in 1960, studied at the New York Institute of Technology and now lives in New York. For anyone who has ever spent time in New York city, the haunting acoustics of the subway and its amazing array of talented "sidewalk musicians" canÕt help but leave a lasting impression. The underground world of the subway is a theater of chance encounters and poetry to be found in each moment and in the countless mysteries of every passerby. In this photograph, MI Zhou captures the frozen instant of the musicianÕs upraised violin bow, indicating a fleeting momentÕs pause in the music that flows forth from this manÕs fingertips. While he is suspended in this split second of time, the subway train behind him blasts by with a blur of motion that seems to disregard the delicate moment occurring inches from its speeding surface. The star-burst of diagonal lines that shoot out towards the viewer bring a sense of breathlessness to this photograph as the sound of one individualÕs spirit combines with the overwhelming noise of civilizationÕs deafening onward thrust.

In the photograph Fiji, by Abby Chen (born in Candong, 1972, currently living in the San Francisco Bay Area), we find another moment frozen in time, this one of a more intimate and personal emotional world. The subject of this photograph is the freedom and joy of life present in a youthful moment, full of healthy vibrancy and exhilarating oneness with the natural environment. A young boy emerges from the shadows, leaping from an edge and into the light, taking a bold step out into the free falling adventure that is life itself. For Western viewers, this scene canÕt help but evoke the famous Thomas Eakins painting, The Swimming Hole, and the black and white photographs that were used as studies for that work. As in that work, the identity of the boy in Fiji is obscured, as he is representative of the idealized youth, the excitement, the thrill, and the promise of unknown future. Chen has poetically captured in her photograph the moment of freefall combined with the glorious combination of sun and water, transporting the viewer into the moment. The sun is directly behind the young boy as he jumps into the unknown, and its light creates the visual drama of the image, though the sun itself is not visible. The sun is instead somewhere beyond and above the frame, as a natural, spiritual presence, in the way that nature shapes and frames our lives while we remain engrossed in the drama of our own volition.

The Kid, a second photograph in the show by Yi-Shu Wang, also uses the light of the sun as an "off screen" element. In this beautiful and emotional rich photograph we find an isolated young boy again representing the dreams, hopes, or even memories of the viewer. As in ChenÕs photograph, Yi-Shu Wang captures the sensual feel of natural sunlight, with its overwhelming, blinding presence, though again the source itself is not shown. Here the sunlight finds its way into a magical underground space in which the symbol of youth and hope walks with a spirited gait into and through the center of light. The vertical structures represent the efforts of mankind, the industry and boundaries of the adult world and all its complications. They form a cocoon for one small human in a solitary, powerful moment of connection to the eternal, omniscient power coming from somewhere above the level of everyday experience. Although the young boy is surrounded by the shadowy mysteries just outside the reach of the light, he carries on his small shoulders a youthful human aspiration which we can feel commingling with the higher powers of our world.

Felix Tian (born in Harbin in 1963, currently lives in San Francisco Bay Area) continues with this carefully directed use of sunlight in his surrealistic photograph Journey. In this work, the sun does finally appear as a central subject included in the composition of the image, its glowing round presence at top visually balanced by the mysterious mask at the bottom of the frame. Tian uses infrared film, which accentuates the feeling of the sunlight and its heat permeating all things on this earth. More than any other photographer in the show, Felix Tian uses symbolic elements deliberately and with an open-ended. His symbols are not to be interpreted literally, but rather intend to strike the subconscious directly with visual elements that evoke deep emotional responses beyond the realm of verbal description. Though the sun and the mask are the two strongest elements defining the focus of Journey, a hang glider sails through the center, emerging from the overwhelming sunlight while below the curving beach takes on the form of wings behind the mask, uniting the image again with a feeling of flight, connection with nature, and unresolved mystery.

In the photograph, Nostalgia, Felix Tian again shows his individualistic way of creating rather than merely seeing through his camera. Is this a reflection seen in water of a scene that actually exists outside the picture space? Is the fisheye curvature of the whole image caused by water, or is it somehow a reference to the curving horizon of the earth itself, thereby magnifying the scale of the image to an enormous degree? Even the presence of the outstretched hand does more to disorient the eye than to explain or define. The picture space becomes an impossible environment, a playful reflection that defies gravity and logic, forcing the eye to make sense of the imagery with an intuitive mind rather then through logic. Felix TianÕs photographs express a vision far removed from that of ordinary experience. His horizon lines and framing of scenes are mutated, taken from the real world but transformed into a vision that is otherworldly. His subjects are clearly shown yet not so clearly understood, their true subjects lying somewhere between the artistÕs imagination and the viewerÕs understanding.

Fresel, another photograph in the show by Abby Chen, is at first glance quite distinct in style from Fiji, but here again one finds the artistÕs ability to evoke a feeling of joy and hope from the subject she photographs. Chen works on several bodies of work at a time, with different approaches and finished styles, but her eye is always drawn to the human form as a central subject and her empathy and connectedness with others is immediately apparent.

In Fresel, a lovely young woman appears frozen in an expressive gesture, her hair gracefully wrapped atop her head, her young shoulders bare and relaxed, her dress elegant. She floats in a mysterious architectural setting that seems a combination of both modern and classical. The graceful lines of her folded arm lead the eye to a pair of closed doors in the farthest recess of the space. Who is she, and what is she doing? Is she even real, for she seems more like a mirage or a fractured bit of a memory, the effect of which is enhanced by the grainy texture of the image and the fragmented composition of her form in the frame. She is visually tied to her environment by an accordion of lines running across the back of her dress which continue through the lines in the patterned, reflective floor surrounding her. The pillars around her accentuate the upward, vertical pull of her dancer-like pose and help to delineate the space around her. A deep humanistic feeling glows forth from this image, a strong indication of the connectedness between the photographer and her subject, full of positive, uplifting, life-affirming spirit. The dreamlike state and mysterious environment with doors leading into the unknown evoke thoughts of the psychological, or fantasy world, where the young woman appears as a nymph or feminine spirit, able to carry wishes and desires away with her ethereal lightness.

The world of fantasy continues in Qiang Ye's photograph Minority Horse. A lone white horse looks down towards the viewer from an elevated horizon line in a windswept barren landscape. Qiang Ye was born in Hanzhou in 1962 and now lives in Vancouver, Canada, but the location of this photograph could be anywhere in the world, as a landscape of the mindÕs imagination. The horse is saddled up for riding, and looks out questioningly. Is this an invitation to travel with the horse along a mysterious road? Or to the contrary, is the horse blocking the path, preventing our passage to whatever future lies down this road? The ghostly sense of light and swirling sky add to the implied drama; perhaps this is a moment from a fairy tale, with a classic white horse and crumbling castle in the background. Or perhaps is it nothing more than a mundane moment in the neglected outback of a far away land, where a horse takes a break from a hard day of labor. The title Minority Horse only adds to the mystery of this photographÕs meaning. The viewer is left with an inexplicable feeling of loneliness, as the wind blows across this harsh environment and the solitary horse whose direction remains unclear. Perhaps the photographer himself identified with the rider-less horse, the implied isolation of the environment, and the unanswered questions such an image provokes.

When artists are isolated, unable to proceed, or shut out from the path to mainstream acceptance, they must search for an outlet. In the case of the Chinese Artist Network, this group of artists were driven together, united by their shared ideals as well as their isolation from the mainstream photography community. As a result, they are empowered with a greater sense of purpose as they fight for their voices to be heard. The way in which this group of young, ambitious, and talented photographers found each other and brought their dreams to a reality will with out a doubt continue to push them, with their own internal momentum, to continue to work, exhibit, and create channels for the outpouring of their voices from within their community to the outside photography art world.

One of the goals they set out to achieve was to be accepted by the world of fine art photographers for being just that: fine art photographers. Not Chinese photographers, not immigrants showing an outsiderÕs perspective, and not uninformed amateurs. From the quality in this show, Something In Common, of both the works and their presentation, not to mention the determination demonstrated in putting this show together themselves, I believe they have achieved an important first step towards a serious consideration of their work within the San Francisco community.