Several years in a row Tse Ming Chong, Founder of Lumenvisum, asked me to participate in the Artist and Photographer Conversation Series. My routine response was that I had no time and was not ready. Indeed, I had a fairly busy schedule when I first relocated back to Hong Kong. Yet the main reason of my rejection to his proposal was my fear of having to delve into my old work or to make art for a predetermined project.
I began seriously taking pictures in the summer of 1990 and have collected tens of thousands of images ever since. The film cameras that I have tried range from Minox subminiature camera, Diana box camera, Seagull/Pearl River twin lens reflex, Nikon SLR, Mamiya RZ67 to Calumet and Graflex Speed Graphic. A photographer’s working method to a large extent reflects a technique as much as a temperament. I eventually settled on a medium format film camera.
I like to explore the world and see it through the viewfinder. My photography heavily relies on the intuition of my trained eyes, my sensibility, and the spontaneity of the medium. I already know the picture when I pick up my camera. The moment I click the shutter I feel that my role as an artist is fulfilled. The resulting image is no longer important to me, and it doesn’t matter if it will have an audience. It has become the norm that in most cases my images either occupy the space in my storage unit or quietly reside somewhere on my computer hard drive.
Last year, I finally decided to accept Mr. Tse’s invitation to participate in this conversation project. Through several dialogues with Stanley Wong, I discovered that we share similar interest in our complex cultural and visual environment. We incessantly photograph the streets of Hong Kong, without a project in mind. Other than the excitement we have at the time of the exposure, we are both left with heaps of untouched negatives.
For the exhibition, I reviewed the images that Stanley Wong provided to me, and selected some to pair with my own work. My work shows a more open view of the scene whereas Stanley’s is relatively closer and, in certain occasions, focus on an object. Despite those differences, each pair shares certain connections or similarities to one another, either visually or conceptually. I intentionally present the two images very close together, imitating the format of stereoviews, which is how the exhibition title originated. I hope each pair of two-dimensional images is seen and then combined in the mind of the audience to give the perception of three-dimensional depth. When the viewer moves between the two images within the pair, they would feel as if they could zoom in and out of the scene.
The image selection process has given me the opportunity to re-examine in detail some of my work from the past two decades. I see the Hong Kong I have captured on film as an intricate environment, with layers of buildings, signs, people, and traffic coming together in disorientating panoply of objects. Fragments of visual information are juxtaposed, creating an ambiguity between three-dimensional form and two dimensional rendering. The city in my photographs seems temporal; evolving before my eyes…
I thank Lumenvisum and Mr. Tse Ming Chong for organizing this exhibition, and for letting me rediscover my work and see it in a way I had never seen before.
– Gretchen So
View Project Images | Read Exhibition Press Release
我的「倆睇」
蘇秀儀
過去數年，光影作坊的創辦人謝明莊都曾邀請我參與每年一度的「藝術家與攝影師對談展」，我一貫的回覆是沒有時間，還沒準備好… …。誠然，回流香港後的我很忙，但真正拒絕的原因卻是不願重翻舊作，或要按照特定的主題做創作。
我從1990年夏天開始認真地拍攝，並已收集了成千上 萬的影像。曾使用的相機有Minox subminiature camera, Diana box camera, Seagull/Pearl River twin lens reflex, Nikon SLR, Mamiya RZ67 to Calumet and Graflex Speed Graphic…等。攝影師的拍攝手法很大程度反映了個人的技術和性格。而我，最终選擇了120相機模式。
我喜愛用相機去探索身邊事物，主要利用眼睛的直覺、個人的洞察力和攝影獨有的快拍功能創作。在舉起相機的同時，我已能確定影像的產生。而在按下快門的一刻，作為藝術家的我，感到任務以經完成，從不深究那些作品的命運，是否會被公諸於世。久而久之，大量的底片和數碼檔案，不是充斥着我的儲存倉，便是靜悄悄地躲在電腦資料庫內的某個角落。
去年，我終於答應參加是次「藝術家與攝影師對談展」。從多次對話中，得悉又一山人跟自己一樣，非常關注身邊事物，經常漫無目的地拍攝香港的大街小巷，大家的得著竟同樣是一堆堆陳年底片。
我從他提供的底片中挑選了一些影像，然後以自己的照片配對回應。儘管我的作品景觀廣闊，而他的距離較近，有時甚至會聚焦在某件實物上，但每對作品在視覺或概念上都有些關連或共通點。為了配合展覽英文標題”Stereoviews” 的構思，我仿效傳統立體照片的模式，把展出的每對照片放得十分接近，希望觀眾能在腦海裏，把兩個類似的平面影像融合一起，營造出立體的假象。當他們左右觀賞照片時，感覺又會像變焦鏡頭般，能把影像放大或縮小。
準備是次展覽使我有機會回顧過去二十多年的創作成果。舊作裡，我記錄了香港錯綜複雜的面貌。不同層次的建築物、招牌、人物及交通工具等，互相交織；破碎的視覺片段並列一起時，令立體事物和平面圖像變得難以分辨。鏡頭下香港的景觀短暫善變，在我眼前不斷地急速發展… …
我在此感謝光影作坊和謝明莊籌劃是次展覽，容許我以嶄新的角度檢視自己封塵已久的作品。