The Mountain is Quiet and the Day is Long—My Take of Dalang Shaos Photographical Art
I have known Dalang Shao for over ten years. Mr. Shao carries many hats. He is an academic pace-setter,a leader in an association, a member of the family with proverbially three generations of photographers,a photographer who garnered many honors and award at home and abroad, and an expert with the superb traditional photographical arts…The Dalang that I know personally is genteel, modest and scholarly. Perhaps,because he is low-keyed and careful with arts, I have a limited understanding of his rich art practices in the last few decades. For some time, my impression of Shaos art rested on his High-quality Black and White Photography published around 2013 as well as a set of reined photo album on the West Lake in Hangzhou.His series of works on the West Lake impressed me deeply, as they demonstrated his superb skills and reined style of black and white photography. Living near the West Lake for nearly 40 years, I ind his works especially endearing to me. In my view, Shao is one of the most representative interpreters of the landscape art of the West Lake.
As if by accident, through the conversations with him in a long journey, I got to know his artistic creations and his relections on art. Particularly after I viewed his “Coming and Going” series, I came to realize that underneath his artistic expressions lied deep cultural genes and hidden power of explosion in the reserved quality. I took a new interest in his long trajectory of art and his art works. After 2014, we had more crossings of path in our profession. From 2015—2017, I had the honor of inviting Shao to participate in a series of experimental photo art activities that I had designed, such as “Touch of Hand” experimental art show as part of photographical art activity in the series of “All Phenomena” hosted by China Academy of Art in 2015; “Viewing · the Exhibit of the West Lake Experimental Photography”, a leading exhibit in“Extraordinary · the West Lake—（First） Art Site for Imaging the West Lake? in January 2017; and the exhibit of the same title in Ningbo in March of the same year. Shaos art not only inherits the classics in the past, but comes to the forefront of experimental art. I was honored to be invited to give talks, during which I had more opportunities to exchange ideas with Shao. In addition, I had an opportunity to observe and chat with Shao at the “The Image of Mind in the West Lake—Dalang Shaos Photography Exhibit” held at the Big Roof Art Gallery in March last year. Shaos artistic expressions and beliefs became more vivid to me.
Stored in my computer are his finely sorted out works with 20 series and four categories, namely,“Respond to the Object and Image the Forms”, “Knocking at Silence to Find the Sound”, “The Imagebeyond Images” and “The Mountain is Quiet and the Day is Long”. Beginning from 1985, in the span of 33years, these works represent the achievement in his long career as an artist. This fat portfolio is a treasure trove of an individual. I am deeply touched as I view his several decades of sacriice and his self-relective images. Because his time span of artistic practice completely overlaps with mine, we share our love for Daguerreotype, our life environment and our work nature is roughly the same. Therefore, to approach Shao?s art, I can proceed from my own intuition and experience and then ind some contact points.
A Study of Shao’s years’ creations show that he has displayed a consistent style: black and white images imbued with scholarly presence. Yet, in different thematic series, different forms are adopted to match the theme. Though the time and territory of the independent thematic works differ greatly, his interest in nature and the places of cultural signiicance as well as his pursuit of esthetics of forms could be interpreted as a persistent thread binding the form and language of his works. His early works such as Deserts （1999）, Cable in the Sky （2006—2008）, Light and Shadow （1985—2018）, and Trees （2006—2016） carried the distinctive style of formalism. The unique expression of style is found in the complanation of the space. The fun with the forms relects typical Oriental esthetics, a fun with classical painting in the Orient. As I study the form of language that he used in his artistic creations, I notice that his works have a tendency of de-objectiication.In other words, he diminished or purposefully detached the attributes associated with bulk and senses of touch such as sense of reality, texture or even the information related to time. In so doing, he dissociated and deconstructed his works into abstract relationships of images and space and led to the direction of abstract esthetic experience and poetics. In his works of different stages, this is a persistent characteristic of form and value orientation. In his three decades of series of works such as Light and Shadow （1985—2018）,Xiapu （2007—2018） and Distant Place （1997—2018）, we can see this typical language of form. In his representative series of work West Lake （1991—2017）, this approach was carried to the limit. The lickering light, murkiness, wetness and unstable void, a large tract of whiteness or dark area were all used to create artistic impressions. Most impressive of all, he was always able to use the large area of the black and white contrast to create a sense transcending vulgarity and a return to the spiritual void. These become most characteristic features of his works.
Shao’s method of creation at times resembles that of the landscape explorer in a foreign land in the early stage of the history of photography. His works focus more on the interpretation of the artistic conception of the home or the extension of such a conception. At times he resembles the artists who wandered on the street of Paris in the early and mid years of the last century, but with vast differences in theme. His works have no distinctive social concerns, nor do they resemble literary narrative of documentary photography. Instead, he was indulged in light, shadow and design. Owing to the excellent Daguerreotype, his works carry the features of standard design that agree with image esthetics of the pure form. These images are esthetically appealing,but their interpretations could easily stop on the level of visual forms. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why for a long time I failed to appreciate the subtlety of his works. However in 2014, when I viewed his Coming and Going series, I was deeply moved by his exchange of time/life with images. My initial understanding of this piece stemmed from the conversation on the journey mentioned early in this essay. I learned that it took him three hours driving back and forth through the whole city of Hangzhou on each workday. He covered the distance of a hundred km from his workplace to his home and vice versa. In order to avoid rush hour, he had to get up before dawn and returned home after dusk. He did it day in and day out, year in and year out. This unbearable sacriice was his routine. His Coming and Going was produced on this routine journey, with his pinhole camera after long-time exposure to what he saw. He placed his camera under his wind shield. Using single trip as a shooting cycle, he transformed what seemed to be empty time and dull journey into opportunity for photography and completed his project. In 2014, when I saw his incomplete series, I was shocked. The light emitted from the photos was like firework display or white unnamable spiritual light. Sometimes they appeared to be alive, and sometimes they appeared to be unnamable void. The consecutive photos shot during the 90 minutes car drive were stored in a 4x5 inch ilm which appeared to be a miniature movie as he watched from his perspective in the car. This affords much food for thought. I cannot help recalling the fun of theatre series of Hiroshi Sugimoto and the experiment of Thomas Bachler. What distinguished Shao?s works is that Shao was conducting day to day experiment. For him, it met his needs in body and soul. Shao not only had this persistence and tolerated the ordeal, but also took delight in accepting the things that came their way. He even transformed unbearable exhaustion into splendid pictures. This undoubtedly was an art of life. It is praiseworthy for an artist to gain courage to face the dificult position and the strength to heal the ailment of the soul and took them as the motivation to face the future and the resources to scale the peak of art. Only the artist who uses life as fountain of inspiration can attain this.
For a decade around 1989 to 2000, I often carried a camera and loitered around the West Lake, searching and waiting for the moment when a view inspired my soul. For several years, I lived between the Solitary Hill and the West Lake. For a long time, the feelings for the hill and water of and near the West Lake were intertwined with my life. When the night fell, I would hide myself in the small washroom, piously handling and developing the film. I was anxiously anticipating tor surprises. Then, I tried to artificially enlarge the photos with Daguerreotype in the small and red world of the room and was anxious to see what would happen the first thing in the morning……All what happened are still fresh in my memory as if it was yesterday. We don’t need to go too far to speculate that Shao experienced all these in his long career.Therefore, I have a deep afinity with him when it comes to photographical creation. One day, when I was sorting out the negatives and contact sheets accumulated for a few decades, I suddenly realized that I needed to add an important frame of reference to understand Shao?s works. That was the few decades of time span.When I examined his works under this frame of reference, I discovered that behind the series of pictures stood a person, who loitered alone in the wilderness, spending thousands of hours in the darkroom, conined,exhausted and excited. Plus, he lost no time in thinking…Unless one was extremely lonely and persistent,one would not do this and entrust the precious life to the search for the relection of the objects on the inner heart. Therefore, these photos do not represent his carefree time, but his decision to exile himself and lived a life as piously as a deeply religious person. Did he do this for inner peace in the world of mind or did he go deeper in his religious quest for authenticity? Whatever the case may be, I can empathize with him. In my view, Shao’s works are not simple. There are always some Zen elements in them. This may not be apparent in his series of works spanning 30 years, but the Coming and Going series that he completed from 2014 to2016 have distinctively therapeutic value. Provided with the pass code for the Coming and Going series, we can decipher Shao?s years of artistic practice and the spiritual thread and inner connection among his works,circumstances and mind. This connection among poetry, culture and life becomes more and more apparent as we examine his series of works completed in USA, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Europe and Japan.
Shao’s path of artistic exploration is an independent and synthetic one. In our synthetic interpretation of his works, we discern the connection between his life and the circumstances and between personalized art form and cultural awareness. This is a great inspiration for me. Hope it will be an inspiration for the aspirants and colleagues in photographical art. It is hoped that it will attract special attention from the thinkers who explore art in an Oriental context.
Zhuantang, Hangzhou, April 2018