A couple of years ago I began working extensively in Beijing and Shanghai, teaching photography, exploring Chinese pictorial culture, and producing commercial photography for clients in China and the United States.
One never knows what to expect, of course, at the beginning of a new project, and this was no different. I expected to be surprised, certainly, because I knew I didn't know China. But I’ve traveled extensively and have lived and worked in many different places, including, in fact, Korea, where I spent the formative years of my childhood -- so I thought I knew how to navigate the learning process. But something unexpected appeared. Repeatedly, it turned out, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Lately I’ve been musing about what I’ve learned from China, about my Chinese friends, about the wide currents that flow between China and America, and about culture in general – the experience of culture, the feeling of culture. Immersed in our milieu we tend to ignore it, but once outside our familiar space, we know its absence. With this work I’m not so concerned with precise definitions, but rather with exploring how culture feels.
In China I drifted between two unknowns: the unknown that I expected, and the unknown that was hidden, or invisible, itself unknown. This second unknown – this unknown unknown – surprised, puzzled and delighted me. In these pictures of ceramics (rice bowls, tea cups, flower vases) purchased in flea markets around Beijing and Shanghai, I hope viewers experience something akin to what I felt in China – a pictorial unknown? – and are similarly puzzled and delighted.
April 2008