Shadow Box Notes

Author: Yu Jian
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: (Photos) Create a false illusion of life. Life is not just a moment; it is history and the scene, a continuous series of events and states in space, countless things on the street cut off by the camera lens of The Photographer, and the life that these people cannot see in the picture a second before or after. Writing is a personal matter, but photography must intervene in the world. No matter how much the camera changes, it cannot change its nature as a tool—weapon; it is minimal violence. Photography is a painful thing, I always feel I am harming and disturbing the world. Especially in Asia south of Yunnan, in societies that believe in Buddha, I can never forget the fleeting panic in people's expressions when I press the shutter, their worry about some unknown fate. The free world is destroyed. Often, my actions are like those of a thief or an invader. Of course, this can be explained within the moral system of modernism. But that is a world that completely does not know what explanation is, a world that fundamentally does not need explanation. If images are a celebration of harm, then my words can be considered a confession. —Yu Jian
The subtitle of this book is "Everyday Life Behind the Globalization Era," and this was not a pre-designed theme. Because in the past few years, I have had the opportunity to travel to some places in the world, mainly in the Lancang-Mekong River Basin, and I have been plagued by a sense of crisis. "the last of the last" has always been my strongest feeling. What is frightening is that "the last" is not a bad world; on the contrary, they are generally the most beautiful world in human history, they just do not conform to the world map designed unilaterally by the "invisible hand."