The Genesis of Visual Knowledge-On Qiu Zhen's New Works of Photography

Wang Chunchen

The photography we talk about today has transcended its classical concept, which is quite out of question but still needs explanation. From the very beginning, photography has been generally supposed to be used for recording and reflecting the natural world, and even been valued for the truthfulness of its recording. This has been the biggest definition of photography and the strongest principle on which classical photography was established.

However, photography has changed dramatically since the 1960s worldwide (while in China it was since the 1990s); especially after the digitalization, it has formed another system of discourse from creation ideas to the way of viewing to the presentation of meaning. We will have misunderstanding and confusion if we don't have enough knowledge of such works with photography as their medium. Though this kind of works is still called photography, they are completely transferred to a unique and self-aware kind of art instead of a simple click of record of the outer world. They emphasize the presentation of viewpoints, which means that the artist tries to endow this kind of medium with the function of narration and expression, just like the strokes and composition of drawing are only done after thinking and ideas.

Qiu Zhen's new series of works are the reflection of this new concept of creation which fully presents the artist's viewpoints and purposes. The artist sets a scene in visual language to deliver a dramatic fable which is called scene-setting photography, or in English, tableau photography. Tableau means a plot or story and came into being together with photography. It did not become an artistic method full of passion, imagination, and challenge until it met today's conceptual art. Qiu Zhen has been practicing this method in recent years, keeping evolving his ideas and fusing the self existence with photography media, making his works photography images in form but actually a creation of meaning delivery by vision instead of vision itself. This is a question modern image culture is trying to bring to light, and also an ability assumed by the new visual language. The viewers could not be able to enter the context of this visual language if they didn't interpret modern image art from the perspective of the new visual image system.

As a new-generation artist, Qiu Zhen has his own experience of the time we are in, just like every one of us are trying to understand and pursue the questions of who we are, why we are living in this world, and what the meaning of our life is. He responded with vision. He put his own confusion and perception of reality in front of the camera, asking in this world dominated by hazy and desire, where is our destination? The bride is a conveyor; faith is a relief. But emptiness, helplessness, and loss still constitute our inner hurt. Magnificence cannot conceal the weakness of life's meaning; candleholder as a metaphor appears in every picture symbolizing the loss and calamity of our heart's light. The persona and the fake bride, boy and girl, ox head and horse face, and the minister are at the same time absurd and metaphoric. With various details discovered, all kinds of contrasts will show. For example, the minister holds Koran in hand while at the same time wraps a woman under his robe, making a clear metaphor; the cat and the mouse are together provoking our imagination; the pig head covered with honey might as well be a simile of the consumption carnival in reality. The knife hidden under the table, the turtle supporting the table legs, the stars outside the window, the clock on the wall telling the wrong time, the up-side-down picture, the clown before the mirror and the mysterious woman in the mirror, the "children's " pictorial placard on the wall, the modern cartoon toys, and the fashion magazines, etc are all displaying a contrast between drama and reality. All of these, like a kaleidoscope, become a metaphor of reality, presenting the absurd vision as archeology of knowledge, blurring self identity once and again....

What the series of Qiu Zhen's creates is a visual metaphor of the modern society. He tries to make vision a knowledge and give images meaning. This makes the new photography medium one of the most valuable and imaginative presenting methods.

Written at the Art Gallery of China Central Academy of Fine Arts
May 19, 2010