As a domestic mobile phone micro-photography explorer, a judge of the Human and Environmental Photography Competition for many years, and a well-known art critic in Shanghai, Xu Mingsong integrates his thoughts on literature, painting, philosophy, architecture, etc. into his work

"Weiying on the Sea" new book sharing session

Can a mobile phone take good works?

During the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Xu Mingsong's new book sharing of "Wei Shadows on the Sea" and Ya Ji were held in Dashang United Art Space. As a domestic mobile phone micro-photography explorer, a judge of the Human and Environmental Photography Competition for many years, and a well-known art critic in Shanghai, Xu Mingsong integrates his thoughts on literature, painting, philosophy, architecture, etc. into his works, constantly breaking and reconstructing, picking up the scattered emotions like poetry in the trivial daily life and broken scenery, presenting the beauty of mobile phone micro-photography.

Taking this time as the new book was published, we talked to him about his micro-photography and mobile phones.

- Xu Mingsong -

963 was born in Shanghai.

is currently living in Shanghai and is a well-known art critic in Shanghai. Shanghai People's Art Publishing House Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Vice President of Shanghai Art Photography Association, Part-time Professor of the School of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, Part-time Professor of the Xu Beihong Art School of Shanghai Maritime University, Executive Director of the Shanghai Creative Design Workers Association, Member of the Theory and Curatorial Art Committee of the Shanghai Artists Association, Executive Editor of the "Art Management" magazine, and Editorial Committee of "Art Contemporary", "Creative Design Source" and "Public Art" magazine. He has published many books, including "Scenery on Paper" and "Architectural Uto: Where Will We Live Tomorrow" (co-authored), and has also worked in public art theory and practice for both his amateurs.

Xu Mingsong2622

Q: Last month, "Weiying on the Sea" was published by Guangxi Normal University Press . Can you introduce this book?

A: This book was completed during the epidemic. Although I have been editing for a lifetime, it is still difficult to select works from a large number of pictures. However, the epidemic has also given me the opportunity to settle down and reflect, so the completion time is not very long.

It originated from my exhibition eight years ago, called "Three Words and Two Photos". A reporter verified that this was the first solo exhibition of mobile photography in China. In addition to the works in the exhibition, the book also contains other micro-photographies of my mobile phone, which are divided into five parts: "Memory of Time", "Invisible City", "Seeing All Things", "Song of Life", and "Inside and Outside the Painting" .

"The song of life is like a poem about the poem" Xu Mingsong

"Golden Autumn" Xu Mingsong

Q: You have proposed the concept of micro photography, can you describe it in detail?

A: The convenience of mobile phones and the function of photography have greatly changed the way we observe things. I call it a new art phenomenon or photography culture phenomenon in the post-photography era.

"Mobile Micro Photography, an Insightful Art Attitude" explains my concept and understanding of micro Photography: "'Everyone is an artist', The famous saying of Boyce has become a reality at the moment. Especially when digital mobile phones occupy the market in a whirlwind manner and then occupy people's hearts, this magic of mobile phone photography directly reaches people's hearts is more extensive and profound than the changes in the photography ecology in the past. Because, if cameras are just tools and visual extensions for people to observe and express things; and mobile phone photography can be regarded as an extension and vision of body functions (most closely related to the body) Extension of perceptual intelligence. It has since become a component of the micro-living circle, such as publishing and sharing personal works of mobile phone photography through WeChat and Weibo's self-media, so it is called micro-photography. "

"Cruel April" Xu Mingsong

"Village in the City" Xu Mingsong

Q: For you, starting mobile phone micro-photography is also an accidental process.

A: Yes, I wrote in the postscript in the book. About ten years ago, my friend, Wang Yin, a reporter and poet of "Southern Weekend", collected interviews and photography works he traveled around the world to create this book, called "Photography Notes", published by Beisanlian. His words and images gave me the first impression of micro-photography on mobile phones, and also triggered my impulse to create. After that, I was out of control and explored today in the field of mobile phone micro-photography.

Q: What is the difference between your mobile phone micro photography and traditional photography?

A: In fact, I have also taken travel photos with SLR, but due to physical burdens and technical requirements, it has not aroused my enthusiasm for photography. Traditional SLR cameras often use wide angles to express large scenes, making the sense of space stronger. Due to the limitations of picture quality, mobile phone micro-photography pays more attention to local and details. Of course, with the development of technology, this may be solved. In fact, the essence of the problem is not technology. Whether it is mobile phone micro-photography or traditional photography, it reflects my ideal of art photography. It is not just a recording tool, I care more about its expressiveness and richness in . I think this richness is more thoroughly reflected in the era of mobile phone micro-photography.

"Invisible City: N Dreams on the Sea" Xu Mingsong

Q: Many of your mobile micro-photographies are for cities, and most people in the city are running around, but your photography has a faint poetic beauty. What is the charm of the city in your eyes?

A: More than 50% of people in this world live in cities. In the book, I quoted Calvino "Invisible City" as the name of the second part. I like architecture very much. If you express your feelings with traditional photography, you may have scenes that many people are familiar with, but I think if the city is like a forest, what we see is leaves. These broken details and fleeting fragments have become the carriers of urban memory and urban scenery. So this is a very worth pondering and in-depth exploration of urban images.

I took a lot of content, such as a mud pond, a mottled poster, traces left by car wiper , etc. They are all very specific but symbolic images. is also the beauty that I pursue in mobile phone micro photography, which is the beauty of virtual reality or the mutual generation of virtual reality. It is also one of the core elements of traditional Chinese aesthetics.

"Sitting and watching the clouds roll and the clouds roll" Xu Mingsong

Q: You grew up in Shanghai and also photographed Shanghai. If you use a few images to describe Shanghai, what would you choose?

A: This is a very difficult problem, it is difficult to define many things, it is very similar to the proposition in philosophy: When you ask me what time is, I can't describe the time itself, because I am in time. is like a city that we stand in the middle of the city but cannot see. How to describe it.

I am willing to call Shanghai the Magic City, thinking that she is indeed magical. Whether native Shanghainese or new Shanghainese, you can feel the very independent characteristics of Shanghai: Its unchange is change. So when a photographer faces the city, it has so many themes that you can constantly discover the freshest things from it.

I think of a group of works by Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto who photographed the sea. Everyone can photograph the sea, but the sea he photographed was very quiet, expressing his cyclical relationship between man, life, nature, and the universe. This philosophical relationship makes us feel that it can be continuously discovered when we look at the image. Similarly, our predecessors took a lot of Shanghai, but today's cities are never fixed, photography is flowing, this city is flowing, we can see different aspects.

"Shocking in the Invisible City" Xu Mingsong

"Water He Dandan" (one of the photos) Xu Mingsong

Q: What kind of picture instantly makes you have the urge to shoot?

A: If a person has a sensitive mind, he can easily find emotions in many things that others seem to be similar. The visual image of is whether you can find someone who empathizes with and . There are also many works in that are very rational, but rationality is also a touching feeling. Touching will make your visual object connect with the work and create a re-creation.

Q: Are you a sensitive person?

A: I think I am a sensitive person, I am a Pisces, and my mind may be more delicate. I have a work called "Two People's Station". It was not called this before. Many artists told me that this work was so good. In fact, it did not touch my sensitivity during the shooting, but when others kept reminding me, the emotional effect would accumulate. So I changed it to this name, why are you called two people? There are people on the platform, and there are people who may be on the way. This literary intention sets this connection between this work and everyone's empathy. So maybe I only have five points to be satisfied with the works that others are 70% satisfied, or maybe I have seven points to be satisfied with the works that others are only three points to be satisfied with? We are constantly empathizing with you, and this is the purpose of art communication.

"Invisible City: Two People's Station" Xu Mingsong

Q: You have been shooting continuously over the years, and there are also a large number of works updated in your daily circle of friends. How do you maintain your creativity?

A: Many people also asked me this question. Photography is different from painting. It is very convenient and does not have such a long creative process. My photography type is not limited to the subject matter. I focus on the details around me. I have different perspectives and compositions, and anything can be included in it, so I will never run out of . As long as you have the enthusiasm for creation, you can always find possibilities. Then will you be tired? I have also found that the things I took were similar to my previous works. But later, I think the massive amount of pictures I have accumulated is my image history.

Furthermore, WeChat Moments is a very important social content. You will be constantly encouraged and communicate with other artists, so my creative enthusiasm has not declined. This is something I've been quite content with so far. Sometimes when I drive, it rains, I will park my car in the right place to take pictures of the rain, the hazy and blurry images of the windshield. Therefore, we must constantly discover the surrounding areas and maintain a habit. Maintaining a keen sense of sensibility is the first priority for visual or text workers.

Q: You mentioned similarity, can you understand it as a reflection of your personal style even if it is similar to the past?

A: is not a personal one. I do not regard similarity as similarity itself. Any moment of is history, and photos are dialogues between the virtual world and reality. Personally, even if there are subtle changes in the scene you take can be interpreted differently. Just like why sometimes I publish a set of works, in fact, each one has a different aspect. Maybe you just need to choose one, but in my opinion, the existence of these things itself is valuable.

Lin Lu Teacher once commented that my mobile phone micro-photography has a kind of Zen meaning. His original words are "Xu Mingsong's mobile phone micro-photography allows us to see the seventh side of the dice." At the moment when many people advocate the meta-universe, dice may have a seventh side. So, I have a slogan: "Purpose mobile phone photography to the end" .

"Memory of Time" Xu Mingsong

Q: Looking back, has your micro-photography changed from ten years ago?

A: My early micro photography was a little rougher, but my shooting methods and concepts have basically not changed. I like to take refracted reflections and virtual light and shadows, and like to express them with oriental aesthetics. It can be said that the context is basically consistent and continuously deepened.

But photography also has a possibility, that is, you can never shoot photography works ten years ago now, just like articles ten years ago, you can't write them today, because they are something captured instantly. art is often hard to come by, and it has a lot to do with the environment and mood of everyone.

Q: Teacher Lin Lu commented that your micro-photography works are a kind of broken and rebuilt ‘order’. How do you achieve this kind of breaking and reconstruction?

A: I thought of two works, one is "Extend Your Hand", which is a very famous image in a picture album. In the picture, the woman's hand almost stretched out of the picture. When I was shooting, I reached one of my hands in front of the camera, which seemed to echo the people in the picture. This is to deconstruct the original work and reconstitute my own photography work.

"Stretch out your hand" Xu Mingsong

This is the method I used more when shooting. For example, I took a silhouette of a human sculpture. The picture looks like the sea, but it is actually an image formed by the blue glass in the bathroom. After I took this backlight scene, I gave it a literary name "Blue Reverie for the Future".

"Blue Reverie for the Future" Xu Mingsong

"Under the Sunset" (Dialogue with Zhong Ming) Xu Mingsong

In the fifth part of "Weiying Sea", I wrote ten comments to some Shanghai artist friends. At the same time, I talked to them in the form of images, which is very interesting.

Let me give you an example. He Xi has a glass work, with a bird flying in the city on it. It feels like there is an ubiquitous obstacle, as if layers of glass have formed a nightmare space between people and the city. Later I went to his studio and took out the reflected images of this work. Visually, it seemed like a bird flying outside the high walls. I called this work "Outside the Horizon", which is also appropriation and reconstruction.

Left: "Stranger" He Xi Right: "Outside the Horizon" Xu Mingsong

"Seeing Modigliani" Xu Mingsong

I also talked to some masters in history through photography. Because many scenes in daily life have some similarities with the works of masters, if I take them, my works will be connected with them, such as works paying tribute to Richter , works paying tribute to Roscoe and Morandi, and works paying tribute to Edward Weston and Man Ray . These are the ways I talk to art. It has gone beyond photography itself and is what I advocate - mobile micro-photography should reflect the creator's inner heart and understanding of the world.

"Association of Green Pepper" pays tribute to Edward Weston Xu Mingsong

Q: You just talked about some artists and photographers. In addition to these, you also like literature and philosophy.

A: I think the correlation between reading and photography may not be reflected explicitly. Chinese people have always said, "Look broadly and make choices, accumulate well and make thin." "If you want to learn poetry, you can spend time outside of poetry. Reading a lot of books, especially reading art-related books will make you have a stronger perception of beauty.

I am a Chinese-based student and have been engaged in art publishing for more than 30 years and have been dealing with art and artists. Long-term accumulation has made me unconsciously form personal characteristics. Some people think my works are very poetic, and some people think that some of my works are closer to painting. I think in the era of all media, these should not become problems. Your understanding of them is also your long-term accumulation and your understanding. At least from my personal creations, I never regard photography as an isolated artistic style. It is cross-border and integrated with other art styles.

There are nearly 200 micro-photographies in the book, and each of them wants to be given literary colors. These words are not only an explanation of the pictures, but sometimes new possibilities are created for the original picture.

"Lan Xinyue Outside the Window" Xu Mingsong

For example, when I was shooting a church in Spain with the setting sun, the picture suddenly trembled, and an unrealistic and shaking image appeared. Maybe it was a waste film for many photographers, but I named it "Sacred Sound" and replaced it with literary image to express it. It felt like the sound of the choir vibrated in the air, which was completely different. For example, I took a picture of rice paper . On the paper is a orchid work. I also took the window next to the rice paper and named it "Orchid Extra Outside the Window", which reminds people of the fragrance of orchids that overflowed out of the window.

I think literature and vision have a lot of connections, and sometimes they feed back to the picture. This is also synesthesia, which requires photographers to accumulate continuously.

Xu Mingsong

Q: In recent years, contemporary art has been respected, painting is the case, photography is the same, some works are of course very good, and some feel empty and in form after reading it, how do you think the two are distinguished.

A: photography has developed to this day and can no longer be narrowly defined. 1839 photography just began to appear, and it is a new existence that expresses the world. More than a hundred years have passed, whether it is expressive photography or documentary photography, whether it is Moholy Najib, which combines photography with design, or the conceptual photography that is often mentioned, they have broken away from our conventional understanding of photography. In contemporary art, photography and videography have become a common medium, and it is the way for artists to re-observe the world. Many people say that the original image was changed later, but I don’t agree.

is very simple. Photography has existed in the late stages of darkrooms since the beginning. With the development of the times and in the digital age, photoshop is the new photography darkroom. Many pictures of the famous Chinese photographer Lang Jingshan are also integrated with post-production images. Although this tree is not the tree taken, it just reflects the artistic conception of Chinese landscape paintings, so we cannot think about the later stage with solidified thinking.

But some photography works do look very empty, for example, we see a lot of photography of the same theme - sky light and cloud shadow, desert sea, Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, etc., and you will feel bored. What is the problem? is all images, including painting images, which have the ideological nature of artist creation. But what are we now? Lots of formal beauty. I call it " sugar water tablets ", which cannot stand scrutiny.

Let me give you an example, when the lotus festival or the lotus is in full bloom, there are people who take photos of lotus flowers all over the pits and valleys. The works taken are similar, with only the formal beauty of light, shadow, lines, etc., and lack the photographer's own ideological cognition. Shanghai painter He Xi also photographed lotus flowers. Shanghai People's Fine Arts Publishing House once published his album, and the lotus flowers in his vision were completely different. How do photographers find its ideological nature? When digital photography becomes popular photography, does mobile photography mean new possibilities? This is what I'm looking for.

"Traces" Xu Mingsong

"Lost Time" Xu Mingsong

Q: You also said, "This is a post-pop era, and an era of image survival." Various media blend, we express more forms, but on the other hand, both urban architecture and people's personality are becoming more and more similar. How do you think young photographers find their own style?

A: Why does have similar existence? To some extent, it is related to the reaction of collective consciousness in our traditional culture. is used to seeing other people’s goodness in our subconscious mind, but can we discover our own goodness and our own potential? I think this is a young creator and it is particularly worth thinking about. Only when you discover yourself can you discover the wonderfulness of the world. Otherwise, this kind of excitement is the excitement of others, not the excitement of oneself, and photography should discover its own excitement.

I often say: "The you I see is myself" . From an aesthetic perspective, beauty is subjective, beauty is objective, and beauty is the unity of subjective and objective. You are the master of the image, and you present yourself in that decisive moment.

Bresson The famous "Little Boy with a Bottle of Wine", a little boy held the Bottle of Wine, whistling in front of the camera, and ran forward happily. Many people can also shoot, but the key is whether you are the first one. Similarly, the oil painting " Father " by Luo Zhongli is an old farmer with a vicissitudes of life. From a realistic perspective, many professional painters at that time may be able to draw, but artists are not the technology itself, and artists need to express their perception of the times.

At that time, Luo Zhongli broke through the shackles of painting huge portraits of the leader and expressed the farmers in Chinese society with strong visual tension. This is his ideological nature. I think all innovations are not groundless, they depend on your accumulation, photography is the beginning of finding oneself, which is very important.

"The Texture of Time" Xu Mingsong

"The Singing of Life: The Deep Autumn Street" Xu Mingsong

Q: How far do you think mobile phone micro-photography will develop in the future?

A: I don’t understand technology at all, so I can’t imagine the future technological life scenarios. But I once saw a report saying that mobile phones will be integrated with human bodies in the future. At this time, your physical space will be integrated with the digital environment. For example, we saw Teresa Teng singing on stage, which is to use simulated images to enable communication across space and time. The digital age may become increasingly difficult to distinguish between true and false.

Recently, a company came to me to do NFT, and I also tried it. I think it is also a process of exploration. Just like when photography first appeared, it took eight hours to complete the exposure. After the 1930s, photography was combined with the artistic trends of the time, producing pictorial photography , Impressionist , experimental photography, etc. These are all synchronized with the times. mobile micro-photography is also synchronized with the times, but its future is limitless.

Q: The last question, as a judge of the 12th Human and Environmental Photography Competition, what are your standards?

A: I pay more attention to the theme interpretation of the human and environmental photography competition, and I hope there will be fewer and fewer sugar water films. I pay more attention to the ideological intensity that the work wants to express. During the selection in previous years, we will find that some humanistic photography appears to be similar, flat, and shallow. I think even natural photography must have a deep humanistic awareness. Just like when we look at Hiroshi Sugimoto, we will see a long-lasting calm. So, I think the photographer should show his unique artistic feeling.

On the other hand, I think the human and environmental photography competition has indeed reached a stage that requires reflection and summary. We have accumulated a lot of good works. How to explore their humanistic connotations? It is recommended that you can do some forums and seminars to guide.