Photography originates from humans' fear of disappearance, manifested as a desire for representation. People replicate and attempt to record the world through photography because they believe in the mirror image. People also confirm their own existence only through the mirror image, and only by confirming their own existence can they verify the existence of others. Although people know that what appears in the mirror is not real but an illusion, they prefer to believe in the illusion because it is the only proof of human existence.
The camera is another mirror; the mirror is used to perceive oneself, while the camera is used to perceive objects. Through the mirror, people see their own eyes, while the camera makes them believe their eyes can see everything. Although what is captured is only a moment, a fleeting instant, the camera fixes this momentary image of the object and presents it to people. People believe that this moment is the emergence of the world, but they neglect the fact that this moment is also the disappearance of the world. So, a photograph is a slice of time. These slices have no gaps, and people cannot squeeze into this slice to see the true image of the world. However, people have always believed that what is recorded in a photograph is an objective world. Therefore, photography becomes evidence of existence, believed to clearly prove my existence, the existence of others, and the existence of the physical world, even if it is only a brief, momentary presence.
Photography makes people believe in its honesty towards reality; it does not lie. It merely mechanically records objective reality, developing and fixing the true people, objects, and scenes onto photographic paper. For a long time, cameras have helped people preserve history and memory. At the same time, people have also discovered that history and memory are often altered, and the truth is as simple and elusive as a camera can restore it.
Thus, the objectivity of photography becomes a mystery. People have invented the camera as a tool to describe reality and also use it to create illusions. So, there may not be absolutely objective photography or recording. Photography only records some subjective consciousness and experience of humans. People use cameras in their work, projecting themselves onto others. When the photographer is in an obvious subject role, the camera's shooting becomes an attack and plunder on the world, an invasion and possession. Therefore, the camera can also be seen as a double-sided mirror, one side projecting the subject and the other reflecting the object. So, in the photographed image, we can also discover many traces of the photographing subject. These traces become our entrance into certain images.
Photography continuously returns to the future and projects the present into the past. Photographs preserve all memories of things that have not happened.
The aura of the mechanical age envelops the memory of the mechanical age, and the scent of silver salt permeates the images of the past. Few people now listen to the black blanks on the film rolls. The space of memory and fantasy, structured by a layer of granularity on black-and-white photographs, has also quietly disintegrated. In the past, only a few people owned cameras, and those who operated them were photographers who had mastered photographic techniques. Photography also became a medium for artists to express themselves. Artists used photography to create paintings, modern art, and conceptual art, such as pictorialism, Dadaist photography, conceptual photography, and so on. Photographic technology continues to evolve, and so do the concepts of photography.
The advent of the information age is so rapid and irresistible. The application of digital cameras has led to an unprecedented prosperity of photography. The world has become a massive database, and the Internet has enabled the rapid production, replication, and dissemination of digital images. The world is filled with images that cover people's lives. Images construct a virtual world, and the virtual becomes the world itself. In such an age of simulacra, how can people use images to feel nostalgic? As Baudrillard said, "It is not a nostalgia for some beautiful things we have lost but for something that has never existed at all. Our era is one without reality but only simulacra. The whole world is like a mirror, with nothing beyond the image."
Today, photography has become a feature of smartphones, making each phone a miniature camera that can be held in hand and carried around. By simply opening the camera app, framing the shot, and pressing the button, one can capture a photo anytime. Everyone can photograph what interests them according to their own wishes, without the need to focus or master aperture and shutter speed. Photography has become a daily activity for ordinary people, reflecting the current state of human existence—an image-based presence. Image dissemination technology in the internet era has made image production, storage, and uploading extremely convenient, making images an important language and means of communication for people.
Photography is no longer a high-end skill accessible only to a few; it has become democratized and popularized. It is as common and ordinary as people using language, where an image is like a word, a sentence, or a passage. These images concern a person and the world they perceive. It is a mirrored world, but different people pass through different mirrors.
In such an era, discussing the boundary between art and non-art may be futile, as this has become an established reality, and we are already in such a scenario. Among the vast sea of images, those that can stay in people's sight and affect their spirits are worth exploring. What makes some images memorable while others are easily ignored? I believe that in this image-filled world, there are certain images that can touch us, and these images must possess qualities that transcend ordinary images and something beyond the image itself. This something beyond the image itself may be precisely the most meaningful part of the image—it is obscured, cannot be seen with eyes, is fleeting, or cannot be spoken. Making silence speak is a difficult task, and the power of images is hidden in this silence.
The camera always involves the relationship between the subject and the object, as if it is manufactured by the concept of subject and object. Held in the hands of the photographer, the camera becomes part of their body, another kind of gaze used to observe the surrounding world. It gazes at others—objects—through humans, projecting the photographer's way of seeing and inner world through their experience. The relationship between the photographer and the photographed object has always constituted the main theme of photography.
It is only in Baudrillard's perspective that the concept of photography takes a turn: what was previously watched and gazed at by the subject now gazes back at the photographer. The photographed "other" has never received such attention and affirmation; it is even endowed with subject characteristics, no longer passive and silent, and begins to have gestures and expressions.
"Objects, like primitives, far outshine us in photography. Objects are inherently unrelated to psychological introspection, and even when facing the lens, their charm can be fully preserved. Since they are also unrelated to representation, everything about their existence is preserved. Speaking of the subject, it is quite unreliable in this regard. This is because, as the price of intelligence or proof of foolishness, the subject has made unprecedented efforts to deny its otherness, only to exist within the limitations of its own identity. Therefore, what should be achieved is that, even for the subject itself, it should be regarded as something still mysterious, and all humans become slightly mysterious (or unknown) existences to each other. Rather than understanding humans as subjects, we should understand them as objects, as others. That is to say, we should understand humans as they truly are."
The task of our era is to restore the otherness of the subject. When the subject photographs themselves, it is also a way of othering the subject. In the era of smartphone photography, people will use the self-photography function. When they turn the lens from others to themselves, self-gazing and self-exploration begin. But at the same time, we will also discover a problem. Although the subject places themselves in front of their own lens for photography, it seems that people have obtained a true self-portrait, but we find that the true subject has been submerged under a layer of monotonous expressions. The so-called subject is also modified countless times by the gaze of society constituted by the masses. And that societal gaze is precisely the aesthetic expectations of most people. Only when the subject gradually strips away the knowledge, insights, experiences, and representations acquired in daily life, can they possibly access the true everyday—a subjectivity that increasingly approaches materiality but can never reach it.
In Baudrillard's photography, I seem to perceive his repeated emphasis on the recognition and respect for materiality. In his photographs of a table lamp and a chair, I can sense the naturally revealed expressions of them. I am more inclined to understand such photography as the instant dissolution of the subject and otherness, merely the encounter and immersion of two beings. Why does a specific object in a specific space happen to be captured by a passerby and photographed at that precise moment? In this process, photography is an invitation, a gaze meeting, and an embrace.