LOIS CONNER

Lois Conner’s work encourages the viewer to explore the similarities and nuances of our world. Though we are shown a moment in time of a specific place, her images invite us to consider the history of that place, its culture and its connection to other places.

“What I am trying to reveal through photography, in a deliberate yet subtle way, is a sense of history. I would like my photographs to describe my relationship between the tangible and the imagined, between fact and fiction. I am a born traveller and adventurer, and an obsessive collector and observer of the landscape, I am attempting to twist what the camera faithfully describes into something of fiction”.

Conner first went to China on a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1984 and has returned every year since. She has made dozens of trips photographing the country for more than thirty years. She uses a banquet camera, a 19th-century invention for capturing large groups of people, which produces a long and narrow image that recalls the format of a Chinese scroll painting, as well as a similar sense of a linear story unfurling before the eyes.

Lois Conner的摄影作品鼓励我们去发现世界中微细而多彩的层次与共通性。作品所展示的是某处特定的一刻，其构图却在邀请我们考虑该地点的历史、文化，以及与其他地域的关系。

“摄影对我来说是一种尝试，含蓄却刻意地揭示一种历史感。我希望作品能够描述有形的与想象的事物当中的关系，存在于事实与虚幻之间。我是一个天生的旅行探险者，同时又是一个着迷于收藏与观察山水的人。我试图扭曲摄影机忠实记录下来的图像，将其化成虚构的故事。”

1984年，Lois Conner通过古根海姆学者奖首次来到中国。此后三十多年，她每年归来，到全国各地摄影。她所用的器材是一款专为拍摄群众而发明的十九世纪大型照相机。这“宴会照相机”所产生的长条照片，与中国传统绘画中的卷轴有异曲同工之妙，有如故事在眼前慢慢展开。

#2019SUMMER