In unit 3, I mainly focused on bringing my project from digital to physical and building up more professional skills in other art and photography-related areas. Although during unit 1 and unit 2, I had several opportunities to bring my works physically to exhibitions, personally, it’s still a trying and learning process as I didn’t have a clear mind what material, dimension of works, way of installing I expect at that time to achieve the ideal effect. So Degree Show, as the first official show in unit 3, became a show in which I settled all the details of my project. After the Degree Show, I did an internship with SAIM studio for London Fashion Week 2023(LFW23) to increase my experience and portfolio in fashion photography and street photography. Outside of campus, I was also invited to attend an official art event—Affordable Art Fair 2023(AAF)—where I gained more experience in making personal works commercial, installing, and framing works. Besides attending different art events and exhibitions, I didn’t give up on traveling which is a necessary way for me to both gain inspiration and fulfill my shooting methods. Above all, how having conversations with people shapes my works, which is a key method working for my project from unit 1 to unit 3, will be discussed later.
The Degree Show in Camberwell College of Arts was the first official exhibition in unit 3 which helped me get most of my project details settled. At the beginning of the show, I proposed to display at least five lines of my works, which are the posthumous portraits: It is what it is and what is beyond， sky fabrics: Mourn a cloud when dawn comes, embroidery photo series: Remember me with my stories instead of my face, polaroid, and a miniature works. However, after discussing with Duncan, the course leader of photography, and Jonathan, the assistant tutor, I realized that instead of showing all works at a time in limited space, leaving proper blank space is a key considerable step, otherwise, the installation might seem crowded and massive. Thus, I decreased the displaying works from five lines to three, the posthumous portraits, sky fabrics, and embroidery photo series, which are the most related works of my project that fit together. Since my project Testament is about posthumous photos, which are the photos put in funerals to mourn the dead people, from unit 1 to unit 3, I am creating anti-conventional posthumous photos for myself. Therefore, for the Degree Show, I decided to install an ideal funeral in the space. The reason I made three portraits A0 size floor standing pieces, framed with wood, is because I want them to be my tombstone. The tombstone should be big enough to catch people’s eyes once they enter my space, but should also reflect those hanging fabrics. So A0 is an ideal size. For a long time, I fancied the light reflection through churches’ windows. So inspired by Japanese designer Aya Kishi’s work After the rain “ by incorporating a series of optical prisms into the centres of tombstones, which as a result, create a spectrum of light on the ground where the grave would be situated,”(Aya,2013) I decided to print my works on a certain material which allow the light goes through and creating same photographic shadows. The normal transparent acetate paper doesn’t work as I tried for the Bargehosue exhibition. Laser prints on acrylic or glass could make the ideal effect. However, due to the high cost and limited time of working out technical issues, after I visited a print company—Genesis Imaging—and discussed with its owner about my needs, we decided to print on fujiclear crystal archive C-tye display material which works ideally with both natural light and light box. To make sure the works can properly stand on the floor, after I discussed with Jonathan, I decided to use two same A0 size acrylic sheets to cover each portrait front and behind as a sandwich, then making them fixed in a wooden frame as a hard support. Although Duncan also suggested using metal frames which could be made faster, I prefer using elements from nature for my project. Buying complete frames for the four portraits may cost too much. So I used wood workshop from the campus to make my frames. After measuring the original wood pieces, length, and width of works, depth when two acrylic sheets cover the works, each frame is made with two short side pieces(859mm x 200mm) and two long side pieces(1207mm x 200mm) with a 4mm deep groove in the middle of each piece which allow the sandwich to slide in. Before making the big frame, I also made an A4 size frame as a test, which succeeded. However, I had to buy wood two times because the first type of wood I bought wasn’t of a nice quality. It bends during the process when making frames bigger. So the second time I bought pine Scandinavian redwood which is harder to make the frames. Combining pieces together to a complete frame during installation wasn’t that successful. The acrylic sheets were soft, so they bent as well while sliding into the groove, which caused the sandwich to either stuck in the middle of the groove, or the two sides of each piece couldn’t perfectly match. By recutting the groove wider and assembling frames with assistance, problems were solved in the end. However, due to the weather conditions and the angle of the sunlight in the exhibiting space, it’s hard for images to create ideal reflections, which became an issue that should be considered for future circumstances.
In Chinese culture, the mourning hall is usually decorated in back and white. And there would be a huge amount of white cloth hanging as an important mourning decoration. To create an anti-conventional and self-fulfilled funeral, I decided to make the hanging fabrics colorful silk. Mourn a cloud when dawn comes is also a series of works for project Testament made with zoomed images of celestial phenomena, majorly sunset, which I’ve been continuing for years but barely show to the public. Photography has been a language for me to communicate with people privately. I believe all those hidden moments, stories, and moods of myself could be conveyed to people via photos. So each image and the color in this series represents my mood, state, and stories that happened at the moment when I shot. I hang these images as my last words to leave messages to every person who reads and feels instead of hanging white fabrics that include no message. All fabrics are silk so they allow the light to go through and are soft enough for the wind to move them. Compared with the printing material and price offered in London, to get the certain silk material I needed and to save costs, all silks were printed in a Chinese industry and posted back to London. To reflect with the floor-standing portraits, each silk is also in A0 size. The digital works are made of more than 20 pieces, but there were only 20 of them displayed considered of the area of exhibiting space. And the amount of floor-standing portraits decreased from four pieces to three pieces. After measuring the length and width of the exhibiting space, I decided to hang the silk works in five lines with four pieces in each line. And there’s one meter between each line so people can walk around and have a clear view of each line. The location of the first line from the front varies during the installation process until it achieves the best visual effect for the space.
To not interrupt the combination of the floor-standing pieces and hanging silks, I made a white plinth in the corner of the space to put my embroidery works. All works were not framed. They were put on the plinth freely like postcards so people could touch and feel them. However, four pieces of works were missing after the show as people might take them away thinking of them as free postcards. So I learned my lesson that at least I should put a sign telling people not to take the works. And it’s better to frame the works and install them properly, especially for these second-edited handmade works, which are unique and couldn’t be made the same.
With the lesson I learned from the Degree Show, when I was invited to attend AAF, I bought an album that properly framed my embroidery works, which made the works seem more official for the art fair, and also became the prototype for the photo book I need to make for the upcoming research festival. AAF is a big London native art fair which except recent graduates like me, having nearly 120 commercial galleries attending, has taught me lessons about how the way installing works affects the value of commercial art. The works I attend the art fair with are the framed embroidery photo book, the floor-standing portraits, and hanging silks. Both the portraits and skills are installed the same way as the Degree Show did. However, after a few conversations with collectors, some of them do think the hanging silks do not seem like individual artwork, instead, they look more like decorations for the floor-standing pieces. As I observed at the fair, due to limited space, the silk on the front line may lay over the line on the back, thus, people don’t go through all the images and details. Therefore, I started to consider for commercial art fairs, whether I should use a new way to install my works to make them more valuable and easy for collators to check. While I walked around during the fair, I was especially searching for those works which are about color and natural phenomena to learn the size and material of the works, and how they were framed and installed. Juan Escudero’s works Nervión 2023 is one of my favorite works at the fair. It’s etching on the paper, working peacefully with lines and gradient color, and is simply framed in a wooden frame with a glass covering. Most of the photographic and painting works at the fair were framed and nailed to the wall disregarding the material, although most of them were made on paper. One of the other works that I tried to learn from is Haruomi lzumi’s The Blue Hour(The Forest), which are mineral pigments in Japanese pepper. Although it’s not framed, it’s properly mounted and attached to the wall. If for fine art exhibitions, the unique way of installing could better display the core feeling of a project, then for the art fair, I should consider a straightforward visual effect to bring each work’s value and content as something forehead. Therefore, for future development, I might consider different ways of installing and framing my works for exhibitions and art fairs. Also, although I attended art fairs two times on campus, it’s not as official and big as AAF. For all the art fairs I attended, how to properly pack works is a worry. In AAF, it has an official team packing those selling works for different sizes. By observing how the packing team works, I also learned related knowledge.
Besides AAF, I also attended a huge art fair—Unseen—in the Netherlands. As I mentioned before, having conversations with people is an important way for me to gain inspiration for my works and learn new skills, I also learned certain new ideas at the Unseen art fair. By discussing with Dobokay Mate about his spots series of works, which are about using chemical treatments to control polaroid light reactions, thus, having images seem like real places but indeed unreal. TAIE is one of his series playing with color, but provides me with a new way of creating images. Mate takes photos of the actual landscape but without a lens. After a certain time of exposing, he will get smooth but blurred colored images. It’s always inspiring to see how artists play with pure colored images with creative ideas and shooting methods supporting behind. Mate has also given his portfolio book as a gift to me after I mentioned to him that I am also doing a project playing with color. So his book is a helpful reference for me. At the fair, I also bought a book—Piece of Colonne. Fragments of Waves.—from a Japanese artist, Tamami Linuma. I mainly reference the book as a basic idea for the publication I am making for the research festival as the framing, material, and size of the book catch readers’ eyes even though there’s no text at all just printed images in the book. But without any text, just images is exactly what Tamami is looking forward to since she’s trying to make all colored images as an infinite wave. All colored images were captured by a memo block Tamami occasionally found on the street. “ The memo block was in the shape of a spiral, with seven colors of paper (light yellow, light red, light blue, dark yellow, dark red, dark blue, and green) with one side glued and more glossy than the other three. Attracted by the decorative nature of this block, Tamami piled them up to make a »colonne/ column« and photographed them under natural light.” (Tamami, 2021) Both colored works from Mate and Tamami were made under certain mechanic concepts, while my works were shot directly from the actual views without many experimentations. But both conversations provide me with new ways of thinking and creating which may build up for my future photographic experimentations. Without focusing on related works with my project, I also learned some creative ways of photography such as making images with a handmade pinhole camera and so on. I also visited other exhibitions in the Netherlands such as the World Press Photo 2023 which meets my interest in documentary photography. And exhibitions I have been to in Sicily, Iceland, Malta, and London all somehow inspire me and teach me certain technical skills.
When it comes to the unit 3, the future development is also something to consider about. However, I am still exploring whether I should continue with fine art photography, documentary photography, or both. I am especially fascinated by landscape documentary photography which leads to the major reason why I always travel around. However, humanity is also something fascinating for me in documentary photography, even if just for shooting landscapes, it requires patience and self-understanding when creating images. So for most of the places where I have been, I would stay as long as I can, and start with attending local events to better fit into local culture and atmosphere so I understand the style of each city or country. Therefore, during unit 3, I have been to Malta for half a month spending time on Gozo island from village to village to celebrate Stella Maris Feast with locals, and another half a month in Iceland celebrating the local cultural festival in Reykjavik and hiking around for landscapes and some celestial phenomena, such as aurora light, as well. Also, I started a new project which will be displayed and briefly introduced on my personal website was also made while I was traveling in Iceland.
Above all, within unit 3 I have learnt a new skill which is underwater photography. I even got an official certificate for underwater photography from the PADI system. The first time I started with underwater photography was during unit 2 when I was shooting portraits with a Kodak underwater film camera in Egypt. Then, to get better visual effects of images, I realized the swimming pool was not enough. Instead, I need to create certain images of the sea. So I was certified for scuba diving first, and then after practicing, got my underwater photography certificate within unit 3. By learning the lessons, I know better with what machines and light I need underwater. Meanwhile, I got my first GoPro and deep diving certificate which allows me to dive a maximum of 40 meters deep, which allows me to take underwater documentary videos of certain species and wrecks in different spots.
From September 15th to 19th, I also did my internship with SAIM studio for LFW 23. During the events, I learned skills for shooting runway shows and backstage. Also, I opened my networks by communicating with local fashion brands, models, celebrities, and news press. By shooting for LFW23, I not only extend my portfolio but also gather opportunities from a new area. A local clothes brand cooperated with me two times for commercial shooting, which is a benefit I got from my experience on LFW23.
According to the above, unit 3 is not only a process for me to extend my original project, but also a key step to clear my mind and build up for future development.