photography.
writings/notes on photography

 

Impervious to Language

I have always honestly wondered how some people can be so certain about whether a photograph is good or not.

I’ve known artist-photographers who “make” photographs like staging a drama performance. Lighting is painting, art-direction the realization of ideas, composition expression…

I’ve also met artist-photographers drawn enormously to the uncanny. In ordinary things there is another life, other dimensions, hidden sounds, a concealed spirit.

 

I am sometimes this kind of picture-maker.
I am particularly drawn to light and shadows. In Chinese, “photography” literally means “catching the shadows”

Seriously speaking, I’ve never “made” any photographs…
I mean, my photography is not about composing, orchestrating.
I mean, my composition is spontaneous and accidental, depending on individual moments of encounter.

My photography is about my presence in the urban space, marks and traces of my drifting mind and city-walking.

Photography is momentary, the articulation of my here-and-now, being there doing.

 

Every photograph, therefore, is a projectile, a forward motion, or else, snatches from the boundless ocean of chaos.

Linda C.H. LAI / July, 2009

on the completion of my portfolio