deconsequences
The “Decisive Moment” (Cartier-Bresson, 1952) was coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson who is considered as one of the most important and influential practitioners of the “street-photography” genre. In his 1952 book by the same title, Cartier-Bresson, introduced to the world a more humanistic but also a more formal approach in his photographic vision. He has been credited with elevating documentary and journalistic photography to a new form of personal artistic expression.
With this work, I am exploring ways in which every day moments can be used to create art works that speak of the immediate and unpredictable experience of everyday life, but are informed by contemporary cultural and social considerations (time and space).
My aim is to explore and develop an alternative approach to the traditional techniques of image making in street-photography and to investigate the relationship between the spatial and temporal aspects of the subject matter. By introducing a multiplicity of moments, as well as expanding space within a single ‘piece’. In other words, I am attempting to fractionalize the “decisive moment” into what could be considered its space/time components. Instead of capturing a single image of the event, I capture several images as a sequence, each preceding image holding clues about the succeeding image, thus forming a narrative.
Since both time and space are traced by the camera, any single image within the sequence may not adequately convey the narrative by itself. Rather, the narrative is derived from looking at the entire sequence as a single ‘piece’. Furthermore, because there is more than one finite moment and more than one aspect of the subject, readings can alter based on how the ‘piece’ is viewed. A ‘piece’ can be read as individual images that interrelate or it can be read as a whole where the sum of the units create the experience. Meaning can thus shift or become more complex.
Thematically, “deconsequences” builds on the previous work "safe distance", which explores how Hong Kong people interact physically in public.
Solo exhibition was held at the Shanghai Street Art Space in Hong Kong, during February of 2008.
