The Narrative of the Memory of the Insignificant
By Su Kunyang

The photographic art of Fang Shengyi dwells much on the niche of the downtrodden-their broken and bleak lives and their secret hopes and desires. His rudimentary yet elegant techniques describe the pettiness of their lives with a hint of melancholy-and yet without making moral judgment. Just as a parched plant begins to bloom anew after a sudden drizzle of rain, their desperate existence slowly unfolds through the camera's lens. The afterimage of the lens exposes the mastery of the photographer, who by integrating the realistic and the dramatic reveals the eternal and symbolic language of the commonplace through his photographic language. In a moment of insight, one feels the subjects of the images are in a state consistent with a cursed timeline of past and present, revealing the repetition and rebirths of their tragedies. Like the dust of our daily lives hidden in the shadows until illuminated by a ray of light, the plight of petty is hardly noticed until perceived by the eyes of the sensitive and empathetic.