As an artist with an engineering background, I enjoy playing with mechanical toys. Photography, as a mechanical art form, has always intrigued me. From studying the scientific properties of photography to delving into its philosophy, I feel that photography offers infinite possibilities. Because photography requires a subject, and subjects are limitless. Photography, in representing reality, is like language in describing facts. People want to be faithful to the facts, yet also leave room for imagination.
My work “Metabolism” was inspired by observing how florists preserve fresh flowers by drying, soaking in chemicals, or coloring them to maintain their original form or transform them into another form, thereby making the flowers immortal. This is similar to how photography transforms the subject into an image, allowing it to remain immortal through photos. I named my work “Metabolism” because although the flowers in the photograph have lost their ability to metabolize due to the florist’s handling, the reproducibility of photography and the audience’s reinterpretation give the subject another kind of metabolic ability.
