Wu Zhihua (Photo)

Author: Wu Zhihua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-01
Features: This book collects the photographic works of Wu Zhihua. In Life by the Sea, Wu Zhihua adopted the square composition of the Hasselblad camera to document the seaside of his hometown,. During this period, he stayed in a studio belonging to a senior painter, and the daily exposure to paintings helped him develop a more precise grasp of composition. The temporal and spatial elements in his photographs began to exhibit a saturation previously unseen. The horizontal line of the sea surface appeared in most of his photos—it was a monotonous, extreme, and unbridgeable line, resembling the starting and ending points of life. Within that boundary, in Wu Zhihua's eyes, people enacted different dramas. I believe he has found his own photographic language in this theme. In the afterword of Life by the Sea, he wrote: "The beach has an extreme landscape, people have extreme differences in their hearts, and different people visit at different times. The ocean still comes and goes with the tides, and people come and go from time to time. Excessive joy and sorrow can be balanced before the ocean. Perhaps it is so—looking back at these photos, I feel calmer. That's why it's called Life by the Sea!"
Wu Zhihua, who is very cheerful, increasingly expressed a sense of loneliness in his photographs. Only then did I realize his other side. For him, photography was an effective channel to communicate with his inner self. I remember once telling him, "You can only see photography as a part of life, not as your whole life. No art can fully replace life." He listened with a smile and nodded in agreement, but I knew he had always tried to find a balance between photography and life. Wu Zhihua struck a good balance because he soon completed the book A Dream of Paradise. With this theme, he tried to find a touch of warmth in the cold. The biggest difference between A Dream of Paradise and A Solitary Ritual was that the previously geometrically tense compositions gradually dissolved. He deeply loved Taipei but felt helpless about its chaos. The indifference he saw through the lens repeatedly dampened his passion. Nevertheless, Wu Zhihua did not criticize what he saw but instead sought humor in the city with eyes full of tolerance and appreciation. Naming the theme A Dream of Paradise must have stemmed from this sentiment!