Jingfeng's Methods
What, How, Why
What
It is a photo work took by myself, demonstrates a young man who wears very ordinary clothes and glasses in Chinese city environment, playing hula hoop in a space. He almost failed on the playing at this moment, but he could not recognize it, because his eyes were closed and his face was happily smiling on this whole behavior. What is interesting is that many of the viewers think this character is me myself, this situation is familiar with that happened on Alec Soth, that many of the viewers think Charles the man handing some models of airplane in the book Sleeping by the Mississippi is the artist himself.
How
It is a very busy scene in which I was working for an exhibition, cooperate with some other staffs. The man is one of them, but I didn’t know him well. I took my camera everywhere at that period, when he was playing it, I felt there was something I want, so I took some photos of him. This photo is the selected one as the outcome, I took it directly by my digital camera, with some flash light.
Why
The photography is not only an art about how to shoot, but also the thing about what you want to choose and express. Finally I’ve chosen this one as the outcome, because in my sight it demonstrates a spirit of our time, in our society. Many of but not only the young generation spend their lives in a very quick developing period of China, they born with hope and high speed improvement of living quality. But things may will get bad at this moment, in an invisible way. The young people mostly can not feel it or analyze it, they just keep their lifestyles on their old ways. I want to demonstrate this stream of the society, that is why this work has been made.
1.2 What
This is a photo work, demonstrates nine huge balloons of planets’ appearance in the universe, hung under the ceiling of a modern building. The ceiling was combined with light grey material, and there were also some light strips in it. The balloons look like the Earth, the Mars, the Jupiter, the Neptune, the Sun and so on. There is an atmosphere, feels like you are in the universe and the planets were coming in front of you.
NOTES: In which plan to exhibit it in the futrue.
How
When I was searching for some objects which connected to my creating, I found this scene in a huge office building in China. Someone who was operating the building organized this scene as a decoration of the hall. I stared at this scene and think of the symbolization of it, then took the photo by my digital camera.
NOTES: The trigger of looking for this kind of scenes.
Why
When I was encountered with the balloons on the ceiling, it reminds me of some dreams of the society about scientificism. People of this time believes that controlling science and technologies means controlling the future, although it’s very difficult to get to all the planets in the solar system but also achievable. However, the dream was partly made true by this simple balloons, they seemed beautiful and real in a plastic material. The situation of this scene is kind of ridiculous and sad, it is part of the time spirit that I want to outline by my works.
NOTE: the time spirit? science and technologies controlling. Beautiful and real - plastic and fake?