The article is from the public number: City Hall (ID: shi-zheng-ting) , author: Tang Xiaosong, from the title figure: Figure worm creativity.
One
Yichang City, Hubei Province has been one of my living places for 25 years. But it wasn’t until this year that I started to understand the city, driven by the “Port and Imaging” photography project. And therefore understand poetry deeper and understand myself.
In August 1994, I graduated to Agricultural Bank of Yichang and started living in the urban area. It started with a three-year class at the Nanjinguan branch office. In my heart, I was an ordinary bank clerk. I grew up in the small county below, eager to live in Yichang. At that time, the two places that most yearned for Yichang were Yichang Department Store and Jiefang Cinema. However, Nanjinguan is a small town on the outskirts of the city. There is no bus. I need to take a money cart to and from the city to get to work.
The downstream of Nanjin Pass is next to Gezhouba, which is the end of the Three Gorges. The branch office is located on the middle of the mountain by the river, and the window of the public toilet overlooking the Yangtze River. One morning I went to the toilet and saw that the wide river surface was completely covered by a few meters of white mist. A black wooden boat in the mist slowly slid downstream.
This scene hasn’t really opened my heart. Nanjin Pass is only 1.8 kilometers away from Sanyoudong. The Sanyoudong Management Office has an account in our branch office. But for three years there, I didn’t seem to have visited Sanyoudong once, and I was not interested. At that time, I wouldn’t have thought that 25 years later, I would return to Beijing from Yichang, carrying a heavy camera bag, and holding a few books about the cliff carvings of Sanyoudong. Run through the cave to find the traces left by Bai Juyi and Ouyang Xiu.
I was very busy at work. I read the “Three Gorges Evening News” twice a day. There are two shifts, with one day off for each shift. In the afternoon of the rest day, I often go to the riverside park outside the road by myself. There was the only public lawn in Yichang at the time. Look at the book, bask in the sun, and soon I lie down and fall asleep.
At that time, there was not even a bridge on the Yangtze River in Yichang City.
” Ape Sounds Across the Taiwan Straits “, Yichang from Jiangnan, 2018.
Second
In June 2001, I resigned from Yichang to Beijing. Until 2014, he has been doing men’s fashion magazines. They return to Yichang once or twice a year on average. Spring Festival will return.
My brother went to work in Yichang in 1989. In 2004, my parents also moved from the county seat to Yichang. So when I go back, I spend most of my time in Yichang.
Yichang has developed rapidly in the past few years. With the expansion of Riverside Park, the length of the river bank has been extended at least three times. It takes less than ten minutes to walk from the parents’ house to Binjiang Park. Everyone has the habit of going for a walk in Binjiang Park after dinner. And if the family members want to talk to me alone, they will also ask me to go for a walk alone in Binjiang Park. This slowly formed a tacit understanding. In these years, family members’ hearts seem to be rarely peaceful.
In the thirteen years of the magazine, I have written about the lives of many people, and I have been exposed to various lives around the world. The focus of the later period gradually shifted to the traditional Chinese lifestyle. In the last year, I went to Japan for an interview and wrote “Kyoto Songsong”, which became a masterpiece of the magazine period. The focus is on Orientals’ attitudes towards life and life.
In those ten years, Yichang ushered in the boom of real estate industry and the great development of the city. Relatives and friends in the county have successively moved to Yichang city. The gap between the rich and the poor has gradually widened, and anti-purpose news of loved ones for property or to support the elderly has been heard. The warmth of the rural society was gradually deconstructed by Qian.
At that time, I felt that Yichang was neither modern nor elegant, and lost the most precious simplicity, so I was getting farther and farther from Yichang. In the end, there was only a little affection and friendship.
But the past is unforgettable after all. I have always wanted to write a book about my hometown. In the spring of 2014, I participated in the workshop of photographer Shen Wei in Three Shadows Hall. After getting in touch with art photography, I wanted to take a picture of my hometown. I never found a suitable method. But then I returned to Yichang and started taking random photos like writing a diary, mostly in Binjiang Park.
Riverside Ceremony of “Songs of the Apes”, 2016. Br
“The Sound of the Cross-Strait Apes”, Victoria Harbour from the perspective of Qu Yuan, 2017.
Three
In August 2018, I went to Three Shadows Hall to participate in the workshop of photo critic and curator He Yining, and I edited the photos taken in Yichang in recent years into a work and displayed them in the workshop. Soon after, I was invited by He Yining to let me join the second phase of the “Port and Image” project co-sponsored by China and the Port Museum of China to shoot Yichang.
Since then, in April of the following year, I returned to Yichang three times, each time about ten days. They all do street-style shooting in Binjiang Park. I noticed that there were many people by the riverside, most of them men. I realized there was a place where they came out to breathe, because I probably knew how depressing the atmosphere in a family was sometimes.
The port itself has a metaphor of “leave”.
Before 25 years old, I was stuck in Yichang. After leaving for many years, he fell into a new inner dilemma and felt a sense of desperation. Two reflections, I want to use this depression and despair as the main theme of the work.
Besides, at the upper end of Binjiang Park, since the 1980s, there has been a tall and thin statue of Qu Yuan standing on the river bank, which is an unavoidable existence for me.
Borrowing from the image of Qu Yuan’s Shen Jiang, I temporarily set the title of the work as “Wandering by the River” to modernize the landscapeFor the background, I want to present a picture of a group of lonely wild ghosts wandering along the river.
Qu Yuan’s image of “Songs of the Apes”, 2018. After one year, the image was painted white. Br
Standing Man, The Sound of Ape on Both Sides, 2017.
Zhenjiang Pavilion, The Sound of Ape on Both Sides, 2018. Br
Wanda Plaza, The Sound of the Apes on Both Sides, 2019.
“Yichang to Xi Yangtze River Bridge” in “Sound of the Apes”, 2018. Zhixi is named after Ouyang Xiu’s “Xiazhou Zhixi Pavilion”. Today there are 9 Yangtze River Bridges and two river dams in the Yichang section of the Yangtze River.
Four
At the end of April this year, under some chance, I slowly realized the flaws in my work. I decided to work hard to get to know Yichang, rather than let these works fall into a mood.
After that, I read a lot of books about the history and geography of Yichang, the Three Gorges, and the Yangtze River. I went to several museums and planning halls in Beijing and Yichang, and went to the scene of some important sites. After locking the main line of the history of poetry, a series of special studies were carried out.
After the research started, I found myself enjoying the process more and more. Like a magical time travel, I first knew the origin of my hometown. It is also the deepening of cognition, which has led to some new chapters in the project of Qingzhou.
《海》
After reading the history of the Yangtze River channel and the geological history of the Three Gorges area, I know the process of the formation of the Yangtze River. For about 200 million years, the Three Gorges area rose from shallow water to land in three major geological movements, and then rose to the entire Central Plains.