Captured on November 18, 2024. The SpaceX Starship Flight 6 launch at Starbase, Boca Chica, Texas.
MFA Art Thesis Solo Exhibition
Feb.26-Mar.9 2024
The Goodan Family Graduate Art Gallery 950 S Raymond Ave, Pasadena, CA
在这些摄影作品中，我试图构建一个介于真实与幻象之间的“失重场域”。通过多重曝光与图像拼贴的手段，当下的时间与空间被折叠，呈现出一种被重构的人工景观。它们不仅是对物理存在的记录，更是我在场之后的视觉回响。
现代社会将一切形式商品化，我们对现实的感知也逐渐被“景观”（Spectacle）和媒介所塑形。我关注的是：当下的公共活动、旅游和娱乐，是如何被系统化地组织成一种可消费的“体验”？空间不再仅仅是物理维度的容器，而是转化成了一个为视觉消费而设的场域，并主动迎合着人们的目光与相机的凝视。很多时候，奇观虽未真正发生，却早已在网络与媒介中完成了预演，并投射在每个前往参与者的脑海里。身处拍摄现场，无论是炫目的视觉、崇高的体验、还是那些被精心设计的框架，都在牵引着我的视线，催促我按下快门。然而，当这些预设的场景被定格、当下的存在感被瞬间抽离时，我似乎看见了一切，又仿佛什么都没看到。
摄影对我而言，是介入这一矛盾的方式，也是我对这些场景的观察和对体验的重构。我在现场被吸引，又在拍摄之后抽离。当现实逐渐让位于拟象（Simulacra）与媒介，相机既成为一道屏障，使我暂时脱身于现代性的漩涡；也成为媒介的延伸，协助我再现景观本身。在作品中，我同时处于症候与叙述者的位置，在参与与旁观之间不断试探一种可能的平衡。
In Of Course, Still Here, I use a medium format camera with the Pixel Shift technique to create 400-megapixel images. Through synthesizing and manipulating dozens of photographs into one final image, I collapsed time and space within the photograph, what appears to be authentic and reliable landscapes hide countless artificial compositions and modifications. I aim to create a space between the realm of existence and the photographic illusion. The landscapes indicate a vast artificial reality shaped by collective imagination and rules. These photos question the presence of individuality and authenticity in consumer behavior.
Entertainment activities are a form of commodity in contemporary society. As capitalism tends to commodify everything, it calls out its authority—the authority behind technology, and societal planning—which guides and educates the consumer's mind. Under commercial operations, man-made spectacles emerge, waiting for people to gaze and possess them. As in the caves, lights meticulously craft a sense of mystery and sublimity, inventing, manufacturing, and marketing the relationship between the viewer and the commodities. The commodity is the cave itself as a spectacle, a hyperreality. Even though I'm in Carlsbad Caverns, it feels like I'm at a vista near the Dodger Stadium, watching a noisy carnival. The deliberately arranged lights, narrow crowded pathways, and prominently introduced signs all seem to encourage my gaze and drive my steps to capture everything I see. Such gazes are omnipresent in my life and creative process; I seem to see everything, yet nothing at all.
For me, the process of photography is a critical observation of these scenes and a reconstruction of my past experiences. I have participated in, felt, and perhaps enjoyed, these events as extensions of my will and body, as McLuhan would say, these experiences are massaging me. But what happens outside these seemingly natural and rightful social activities and environments? I am drawn to the occurrence of these events and the social reality they point to. I aim to document and preserve these current thoughts and complex experiences. Thus, I raise my camera to shoot, just like tourists in caves, viewers of SpaceX launches, and concert attendees. I am looking at it from their perspective, but I took a step back and tried to experience the experience itself. As Sontag gave pointed out in On Photography, "Photographs are experience captured, and the camera is the arm of the consciousness in its acquisitive mood." Traces of Bauman's liquid modernity might be found in these photos, where not only people and capital are in flux, but experiences are too, existing in the processes of consumption and tourism, and changing with the collective narrative.
现代社会将一切形式商品化，我们对现实的感知也逐渐被“景观”（Spectacle）和媒介所塑形。我关注的是：当下的公共活动、旅游和娱乐，是如何被系统化地组织成一种可消费的“体验”？空间不再仅仅是物理维度的容器，而是转化成了一个为视觉消费而设的场域，并主动迎合着人们的目光与相机的凝视。很多时候，奇观虽未真正发生，却早已在网络与媒介中完成了预演，并投射在每个前往参与者的脑海里。身处拍摄现场，无论是炫目的视觉、崇高的体验、还是那些被精心设计的框架，都在牵引着我的视线，催促我按下快门。然而，当这些预设的场景被定格、当下的存在感被瞬间抽离时，我似乎看见了一切，又仿佛什么都没看到。
摄影对我而言，是介入这一矛盾的方式，也是我对这些场景的观察和对体验的重构。我在现场被吸引，又在拍摄之后抽离。当现实逐渐让位于拟象（Simulacra）与媒介，相机既成为一道屏障，使我暂时脱身于现代性的漩涡；也成为媒介的延伸，协助我再现景观本身。在作品中，我同时处于症候与叙述者的位置，在参与与旁观之间不断试探一种可能的平衡。
In Of Course, Still Here, I use a medium format camera with the Pixel Shift technique to create 400-megapixel images. Through synthesizing and manipulating dozens of photographs into one final image, I collapsed time and space within the photograph, what appears to be authentic and reliable landscapes hide countless artificial compositions and modifications. I aim to create a space between the realm of existence and the photographic illusion. The landscapes indicate a vast artificial reality shaped by collective imagination and rules. These photos question the presence of individuality and authenticity in consumer behavior.
Entertainment activities are a form of commodity in contemporary society. As capitalism tends to commodify everything, it calls out its authority—the authority behind technology, and societal planning—which guides and educates the consumer's mind. Under commercial operations, man-made spectacles emerge, waiting for people to gaze and possess them. As in the caves, lights meticulously craft a sense of mystery and sublimity, inventing, manufacturing, and marketing the relationship between the viewer and the commodities. The commodity is the cave itself as a spectacle, a hyperreality. Even though I'm in Carlsbad Caverns, it feels like I'm at a vista near the Dodger Stadium, watching a noisy carnival. The deliberately arranged lights, narrow crowded pathways, and prominently introduced signs all seem to encourage my gaze and drive my steps to capture everything I see. Such gazes are omnipresent in my life and creative process; I seem to see everything, yet nothing at all.
For me, the process of photography is a critical observation of these scenes and a reconstruction of my past experiences. I have participated in, felt, and perhaps enjoyed, these events as extensions of my will and body, as McLuhan would say, these experiences are massaging me. But what happens outside these seemingly natural and rightful social activities and environments? I am drawn to the occurrence of these events and the social reality they point to. I aim to document and preserve these current thoughts and complex experiences. Thus, I raise my camera to shoot, just like tourists in caves, viewers of SpaceX launches, and concert attendees. I am looking at it from their perspective, but I took a step back and tried to experience the experience itself. As Sontag gave pointed out in On Photography, "Photographs are experience captured, and the camera is the arm of the consciousness in its acquisitive mood." Traces of Bauman's liquid modernity might be found in these photos, where not only people and capital are in flux, but experiences are too, existing in the processes of consumption and tourism, and changing with the collective narrative.