On "Unconscious Model"

Inspired by Alec Soth’s recent blog entry "Unconscious Model" which has discussed David LaChapelle, D&G "rape" ad and etc. I have come up some random thoughts.

Often I got really annoyed by the pretentious reason that photographers put up to their work (sometimes great work). Usually I am not interested in what photographers have to describe their work, especially the inventive tricks of picture-making, that ruins my curiosity to the photographs.

I can only deeply touched by the pure photographs, I mean when a photograph just looks and functions as a photograph, needless of a list of reason to prove the profoundity of it. The subjects of the photographs that move me are the ones purely about life, and then life is about everything. So when the photographs pinpoint very specific idea, they seem weakly incomplete.

Here is a photograph of a very conscious Britney Spears©David LaChapple (left), and a less conscious Britney by an unknown paparazzi (right).


Here is a photograph of a very conscious Kate Moss©David LaChapple, and a less conscious Kate by an unknown paparazzi.

With All Due Respect to the thoughtful LaChapple quote. I don’t think there is such thing as “unconscious model”, especially the models on the set, how can an invited model be unconscious of the camera? Unless they are dead, that being said, I mean the kind of dead people in Weegee’s photo, not necessary those in witkins’ work. Speaking of Wikins’ work, it strangely reminds me the D&G rape photo, but I am not going to think too much about it, because three months later, most people won’t even remember it.

Bigger can be better as long as one knows how to handle it.

All the sudden people start to talk about size again, quite a few discussion starts with the new Gursky photographs. I have always loved large photographs as long as the content satisfies the size and/or the size holds up the content. Ironically, most of us print on standard-sized paper that corporations had decided for us. While I was watching the film Mongolia Ping Pong at home the other day, I imagined how breathtaking it would look like in a big movie theatre, although my 38” TV is slightly too big for porn.

Large print has its place in photography. In my opinion, Gursky’s extremely detail oriented prints of large-scale scenery look the best in his huge prints. When they are small, they lose the spectacular. We all see whole a lot over-blown prints in the last few years, some are simply the fashion victims, and some are “conceptually” pixelated. Photographs look and feel different in every size, just like jeans, there is one perfect size for every person. And the person in the jeans is like the content/concept of the photograph. Some people looks awful even in the most expensive Versace gown.

Madness

Chad Muthard’s Photo March Madness is hitting every single photo blog on the Web, so here is my final four: Arbus, Sternfeld, Witkin and Eggleston. I have heard people spending hours on this and that's exactly what I was afraid of. I said I have just nailed it down in 4 minutes, but the damn chart kept popping in my mind (and my computer screen) all day. Mainly I was considering change one of my final four... wait, I need to stop…

Two of those images.

Do you have any of those images that you just can’t figure out whether you really like them or not, or sometimes you love/hate relationship with them is all depend on your mood? Well, here is two of them for me. For your curiosity, they are my new favorites…well...sort of.

Website Updated.

Finally, I have updated my website. The new added project is Float & Fall, a project about emotional disconnection. I have only uploaded a few images from the project. I am still working on editing and refining the project, more image will be added soon. Also on my website is my documentary project Concubines of New York which is about Chinese Opera in America, this is an on-going project and it will be updated along with the developing of the project. Please check it out.

William Eggleston for Marc Jacobs

William Eggleston (along with Charlotte Rampling) for Marc Jacobs is the hottest ad. I’ve seen recently, the last hot ad. I loved was a Cindy Sherman for Marc Jacobs, in between there are some strangely beautiful Collier Schorr’s book-turn-ad. for Comme Des Garcons. The Marc Jacobs Campaign, which is photographed by Juergen Teller, has always stood out from the others in the magazine. Why? Because you (by saying you, I mean myself) always want know who is the stranger in his ad. when you don’t know, you feel secretly shamed and then turn it to Google, then when you find out who that very famous person is, you feel a bit smarter especially when you walk by the Bleeker Street MJ store and ask your best friend the same question and he doesn't know / feel very shamed then turn it to Google… See what I mean? We need to have smarter ad. Campaign like this (by not featuring the same skinny drug-use model forever, but use an inferential culture figure), so people get smarter even by reading fashion magazines. How brilliant! I think this photo-legend for high fashion trend should just keep going. I totally want to see a Nan Goldin for Vivienne Westwood or Duane Michals for Versace.