Ancestors and Photography in China
Jeanne Boden
Abstract:
This paper looks at the relation between ancestor worship and photography in China in general and more specifically it focuses on a series of contemporary photographs dealing with death of family members in China: Wang Youshen’s Before and after grandmother passed away (1989-1994). In recent times many scholars, including myself, have explored the post-colonial, post-traditional and post-socialist conditions of Chinese art and have elaborated on the limits of Western theory in the analysis of art and photography as art from China. In China the depiction of family members obviously takes place in a Chinese context and the pictures we look at in this paper should be appreciated as such. Since we deal with the issue of life and death not only photographs of living family members, but also the depiction of ancestors comes into scope. The fact that there has been a connection between ancestor portraiture and photography since earliest times motivates me to explore the photographs of Wang Youshen dealing with family, life and death in the context of ancestor worship. This paper shows that contemporary art photography from China can be interpreted against the background of China’s tradition.
Résumé:
Cet article analyse le rapporte entre le culte des ancêtres et la photographie en Chine, plus spécialement dans une série de photos contemporaines sur le thème de la mort de membres de la famille : Before and
after grandmother passed away (1989-1994) de Wang Youshen. Récemment, de nombreux chercheurs,
dont moi-même, ont examiné les conditions post-coloniales, post-traditionnelles et post-socialistes de l’art chinois et souligné les limites d’une théorie occidentale pour l’étude de l’art et de la photographie comme expression artistique en Chine. En Chine, la représentation des membres de la famille a lieu dans un contexte chinois et c’est bien de cette perspective-là qu’il importe de regarder ce type d’images. Comme il s’agit de mort et de vie, la représentation ne concerne pas seulement les membres de la famille encore en vie, mais aussi les ancêtres. L’existence d’un lien entre représentation des ancêtres et photographie depuis les origines du médium me pousse à explorer plus avant la photographie de famille et les thèmes de vie et de mort dans l’art de Wang Youshen dans la perspective du culte des ancêtres. C’est pour moi une façon de montrer que la photographie d’art contemporaine de Chine peut être étudiée à la lumière des traditions artistiques du pays.
Keywords:
Ancestors and Photography in China
This paper looks at the relation between ancestor worship and photography in China in general and more specifically it focuses on a series of contemporary photographs dealing with death of family members in China: Wang Youshen’s Before and after grandmother passed away (1989-1994).
Wang Youshen (Beijing, 1964) graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Upon graduation he became editor of the Beijing Youth Daily (beijing qingnian bao 北京青年报), a newspaper of major importance in reporting on the developments of contemporary Chinese art since the 1980s.1 He was educated as a painter, but he soon became known for his performances mand installations
in which he uses photographs and newspapers.2 Examples are The newspaper man (baorener 报人儿,
1986) for which he created a costume of newspapers and walked through the streets of Beijing, and the
Newspaper – Advertising: Great Wall (baozhi-guanggao-changcheng 报纸广告长城, 1993) a
wrap-up installation of a seventeen by twelve meter part of the Great Wall using silk-screen prints, white cotton cloth and newspapers.3 In some of his works Wang Youshen uses photographs of his own family
members. An example is his installation Nutritious Soil (ying yang tu 营养土) from 1995 in which he combines objects and materials like soil and photographs from his father.4 In 2013 he created a second
installation with pictures of his grandmother at the Regis Centre for Art, University of Minnesota.5 This
paper focuses on his first work staging his grandmother: Before and after grandmother passed away. Wang Youshen played an active role in the development of Chinese contemporary art scene in the 1980 after China had opened its doors. His contribution to the development of contemporary art photography in China is beyond the scope of this paper. Here we focus on a series of photographs with the theme of life and death.
Wang Youshen turns to his inner circle, his own family, as a subject in his work. We follow the process of deterioration of his grandmother ending in death and the continuation of life after she has died. Wang Youshen presents a series of three times three photographs depicting his grandmother, first when she is still alive, secondly when her body has died and is being prepared, and thirdly when she is gone and only photographs of her are left.
Photography and Death
Generally portraiture and family portraiture is an important field in the analysis of both art photography and vernacular photography. Photography also plays an important role in death cults and in remembering the dead, in China and in the West. This kind of photography is always located in a specific cultural context.
1. http://www.china1980s.org/files/interview/wysftfinalised_201102021649558058.pdf (in Mandarin. Consulted 22/02/2015).
2. Lu Hong, Sun Zhenhua, Yihua de Roushen: Zhongguo Xingwei Yishu. (China Performance Art), Shijiazhuang: Hebei Meishu Chubanshe 2006, 133-134 鲁虹,中国先锋艺术 1979－2004, 石家庄：河北美术出版社,2006, 133-134.
3. Gao Minglu, The Wall. Reshaping contemporary Chinese Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York: University of Buffalo Art Galleries, Beijing: Millennium Art Museum 2005, 301.
4. Alexander Tolnay, Ingrid Mössinger, Dorit Marhenke, Andreas Schmid, Xu Xiaoyu, Zeitgenössische Fotokunst aus der Volksrepublik China, Heidelberg: Edition Braus 1997, 12.
Various authors have explored the relationship between photography and death. André Bazin draws attention to the fact that in ancient Egypt embalming the dead aimed at survival of the corporeal body, attempting to snatch it from the flow of time, hoping for preservation of life by representation of life. Throughout art history images of people have been created in an effort to escape oblivion. The medium of photography brought new perspectives by conferring a quality of credibility forcing us to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced. For Bazin, a photograph embalms time and preserves the object ‘enshrouded as it were in an instant, as the bodies of insects are preserved intact, out of the distant past, in amber.’6
For Roland Barthes death is at the core of photography. In Camera Lucida he argues that a photograph represents the subtle moment when: “I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object: I then experience a micro-version of death.”7 Photographs can never
be ‘lifelike’, they are no more than a tableau vivant, ‘a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath we see the dead’.8
Barthes emphasizes the photograph’s intense relationship with time. The essence of photography is the referent ‘That-has-been’: “What I see has been there … it has been absolutely, irrefutable present, and yet already deferred.”9 Barthes sees a superimposition of reality and of the past, photographs show
reality in a past state: at once the past and the real. Time is immobilized in a photograph. The photograph produces death while trying to preserve life.
In Die Tode der Fotografie. Totenfotografie und ihr sozialer Gebrauch Katharina Sykora
researches the social meaning of photographs of dead people.10 She draws analogies in the relationship
between death and photography and the relationship between reality and imagination. While we can never transcend into death, the bodily remains paradoxically represent both present and absent, life and death. The encounter with a corpse thus results in a crisis of perception. This crisis is duplicated in photographs of a dead person who is at the same time there and not there. Although such a photograph seems to refer to an immediate reality, it is unclear what kind of reality that is. Sykora sees similarities between photography and death in this crisis of perception with the referent simultaneously showing itself and escaping reality. Sykora’s research focuses on death rituals in the West. Likewise, Audrey Linkman in Photography and Death focuses mainly on photographs in a Western, often Christian context.11
In China the depiction of family members obviously takes place in a Chinese context and the pictures we look at here should be appreciated as such. Since we deal with the issue of life and death not only photographs of living family members, but also the depiction of ancestors comes into scope.
Interestingly, both Bazin and Barthes relate to time. Within a Western chronological sequential timeframe, death is the inescapable result of the passing of time. Death rituals take place at the funeral, 6. André Bazin, (transl. Hugh Gray), The Ontology of the Photographic Image, Film Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 4 (Summer, 1960), p 8, University of California Press, accessed: 24/02/2015.
7. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, transl. Richard Howard, London: Vintage Books 2000, 14.
8. Ibid. 32. 9. Ibid. 77.
10. Katharina Sykora, Die Tode der Fotografie. Totenfotografie und ihr sozialer Gebrauch, Munchen: Fink 2009. 11. Audrey Linkman, Photography and Death, London: Reaktion Books 2011.
the end of life. In China time and space are one, interrelated and cyclical. Death rituals not only take place at the end of a person’s life, but as ancestors remain part of the family, rituals for the death are ongoing and an integral part of life.
Contemporary Photography as a Continuation of Tradition
In earlier research I have discussed the limits of Western theory in the analysis of art and art photography from China.12 Other scholars like Philippe Calia and Sara Stevenson have also approached contemporary
photography from a post-colonial viewpoint.13 While it is of course possible to investigate any photograph
within a Western theoretical framework, I will interpret the series of photographs in focus here against a Chinese background. Rather than viewing contemporary art photography as a rupture with China’s past, we can also interpret it as a continuity of it. The fact that there has been a connection between ancestor portraiture and photography since earliest times motivates the exploration of Wang Youshen’s photographs in the context of ancestor worship.
Traditionally Chinese families are structured around and based on Confucian dynamics with filial piety (xiao 孝) as one of the core aspects. Families are identified by the surname referring to descent in the male line. The members of a household are considered the living representatives of a line of descent stretching from the earliest remembered ancestors down to the present descendants and onwards to the future generations who would continue the family line.14 The belief that ancestors continue to have
influence after the body has deceased has led to ancestor worship and a complex death cult throughout the millennia.
Family members hold their particular position within the family. Rituals (li 礼) maintain order and harmony. Ancestor worship means looking after one’s parents in life and in death. Wang Youshen presents photographs of his grandmother from father’s side, his nainai. who traditionally holds a more important position within the family system than the grandmother from mother’s side, who is called
waipo 外婆, wai meaning the ‘external side’.
Ancestor worship continues to be part of wedding rituals in China today. As the major event in the wedding ritual, called the ‘third day worship’ (baisan 拜三) the groom worships his ancestors and visits his close senior paternal family members three days after the wedding.15
A filial son should perform the right rituals for his parents when they are alive and during the funeral when they die. The Chinese term xiao means both ‘filial piety’ and ‘mourning’. The Analects of Confucius prescribe: “The expression ‘sacrifice as though present’ is taken to mean ‘sacrifice to the spirits as though the spirits are present’.”16 The Classic of Filial Piety (xiao jing 孝经) describes the behaviour
12. Jeanne Boden, What is Chinese in contemporary Chinese art?, Ghent: Ghent University, 2011.
13. Philippe Calia 2004: http://www.upf.edu/forma/_pdf/vol04/forma_vol04_07callia.pdf (Consulted: 22/02/2015) Sara Stevenson, ‘The Empire Looks Back: Subverting the Imperial Gaze’, History of Photography, 35:2, (May 2011), 142-156.
14. Hsu, 1971, in Norman Stockman, Understanding Chinese Society, Cambridge, Maldon: Polity Press, 2000, 96.
15. Myron Cohen, Kinship, Contract, Community, and State. Anthropological perspectives on China, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2005, 100.
16. Analects 3:12, in Roger T. Ames, Confucian Role Ethics. A Vocabulary, Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press 2011, 113.
of the filial son as follows: “In serving his parents a pious son demonstrates his sincere reverence while at home; he supports them with great pleasure; when they are ill, he shows his anxiety; in mourning for them he feels the deepest grief; in sacrificing to them, he manifests his greatest solemnity. If he has fulfilled these five duties, then he is regarded as serving well his parents.”17
Also Taoist concepts influence ancestor worship. Life and death are relative and death is just another state to be in. In classical cosmology all things are interrelated and in constant flux. The Taoist Zhuangzi defines the self as part of nature: “When you look at yourself as part of the natural scheme of things, you are equal to the most minute insignificant creature in the world, but your existence is great because you are in unity with the whole universe.”18 One of Zhuangzi’s famous stories is the dream of
the butterfly. Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly. He flutters happily around. When he awakes, he does not know if he is a butterfly who dreams he is a human being or a human being who dreamt he was a butterfly. For Zhuangzi all things are relative, even life and death. The self is a tiny part of a holistic system and subject to the constant flux therein, it is a micro-cosmos in a macro-cosmos. Even life and death are relative: “So in the universe, nothing can be said to be superior to others; nor one form of existence can be said to be superior to another. In life we assume one form of existence. Death simply means that we have to give up this form of existence and to assume another. If this form is good, there is no reason to suppose that the others are not.”19 Ancestor worship and family relations should be
understood against this context of interrelatedness. Photography and Ancestors
In the 19th Century, photographs inspired by traditional Chinese ancestor paintings popular in the Qing
Dynasty (1644-1911), served the goal of stereotyping the exotic. Early photographs in China were taken by Westerners to be shown to a Western public as representations of local costumes, customs, scenes and people from the colonized areas. In these portraits people were shot in a frontal pose, looking straight into the camera. The frontal depiction of people became to be perceived as one of the elements typical of Chinese portrait photography. Wu Hung argues that the Chinese “peculiarities” in portrait taking become a recurrent topic of ridicule in Western accounts. The British Journal of Photography 19, no 658 published in 1872 showed a drawing made by John Thomson to mock Chinese portraiture style: “a local sitter always demands a full frontal view with both ears showing, always looks straight into the camera lens in a confrontational manner, always sits squarely next to a side table with artificial flowers on it, always hates shadows on his face, always wears his best clothes and holds a favourite object such as a fan or a snuff-bottle, and always displays his long-nailed fingers distinctly.”20
Photographer Milton Miller, active in China at the time was one of the people who helped creating what would later be perceived as a typical Chinese style. Wu Hung sees similarities in the composition 17. Fu Genqing, Liu Ruixiang, Lin Zhihe, The Classical of Filial Piety (Xiao Jing), Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press 1998, 21.
18. Dien, 1983, p 282, in Gao Ge, Stella Ting -Toomey, Communicating Effectively With the Chinese, Thousand Oaks, London: New Delhi Sage Publications 1998, 10.
19. Feng Youlan, A Taoist Classic Chuang-Tzu, Beijing: Foreign Language Press 1991, 12.
20. Wu Hung, ‘Inventing a “Chinese” portrait style in early photography. The case of Milton Miller’ in Jeffrey W. Cody, Frances Terpal, Brush & Shutter. Early photography in China, Los Angeles: The Getty Research Institute 2011, 80.
between the so-called typical Chinese style that Milton Miller creates and traditional Chinese ancestor portraits with their frontal posture, direct look, empty background, spatial reduction and enhanced two-dimensionality, and feeling of stillness and lack of animation.21 In reality, while Westerners claimed to
depict the typical Chinese, their pictures opposed the Chinese way of portraiture. Westerners constructed a Chinese portrait style to serve their own goal: to show the exotic other by contrasting the Euro-American ideal of portrait photography. Interestingly, Western photographers helped creating a distinct Chinese portrait style that within the colonial context came to be stereotyped and considered as typical Chinese by Chinese photographers as well.22
Whether or not the ‘typical Chinese’ style was initiated only by Westerners remains to be researched. The Chinese series Old Photographs (lao zhaopian 老照片) created in the 1990s depicts a drawing of an 1894 photograph studio set up. In the drawing we see a seated man and woman facing the camera, seated against a background of a landscape painting, in between them a table with a vase with flowers on top of it.23 This is equally reminiscent of ancestor painting. Another photograph depicts
a wedding. At the centre of the picture the bride and groom are portrayed in frontal pose, surrounded by other men, woman and children. In between the heads of the marrying couple we look straight into a portrait of the ancestor on the wall behind them. The picture of the male ancestor is positioned slightly higher than the heads of the other people in the photograph, resulting in a pyramidal shape, evoking the impression that he is overlooking the whole event as a kind of protagonist.24
Another picture shows the tomb of Lu Xun, with his portrait in frontal pose at the centre of the
surrounding group of people.25 These are examples of family pictures with a photograph of an ancestor
at the centre representing the absent person, as if he were still alive.26
Grandmother Passing Away
In Before and after grandmother passed away (1989-1994) Wang Youshen presents nine photographs of his grandmother. Silvia Fok associates Wang Youshen’s series with the early Christian and medieval triptych.27 In Christian triptychs however, the centrepiece is always the core and most important part. It
is a fixed and clearly outlined unit. The side parts serve to support the centre. In Wang Youshen’s work we see a series of pictures that deal with the process from life to death to after death. Rather than putting Wang Youshen’s work in the Christian context of Heaven and Hell, where life ends with the death of a person after which the soul is judged and rewarded or punished by a supernatural god, we put it in the context of ancestor worship inspired by earthly Confucianism and Taoism. In Wang Youshen’s work the idea of ancestor worship, looking after family members, the cycle and continuation of life is strong. Death does not mean the end.
21. Ibid. 81. 22. Ibid. 85.
23. Feng Keli, Lao Zhaopian I (Old Photographs I), Jinan: Shandong huabao chubanshe 1996 冯克力,“老照片” 山东画报出版社，济南 1996, 71.
24. Feng Keli, Wu Bin, Lao Zhaopian II, III (Old Photographs I), Jinan`; Shandong huabao chubanshe 1996 冯克
力，吴宾，“老照片”山东画报出版社，济南 1997, 16.
25. Fu Genqing, Liu Ruixiang, Lin Zhihe, The Classical of Filial Piety (Xiao Jing), Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press 1998, 105.
26. I consciously use ‘he’ because ancestor portraits are often male in the patriarchal family system.
Figure 2. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 3. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
We first meet the grandmother sitting on the side of the bed, looking into the camera. The black shadow in the upper left top corner of the picture resonates with the black cupboard in the lower right bottom. This, in combination with the horizontal lines in the tissue on the wall and the vertical lines of the bed frame and cupboard, seem to literally outline the space where the woman’s life is taking place. Also in the next picture she sits on the bed. Weak light falls from the window into the room onto her head and face, leaving part of the room pitch dark. The light from the window as a spotlight on her head makes the wrinkles on her face stand out. She can hardly open her eyes; her wrinkled face represents a long life that is now slowly but surely coming to an end. The light effect connecting the window with the head of the woman evokes a special atmosphere, as if her spirit already wants to leave her body. The effect of light and shadow creates a hazy atmosphere, as if life is fading.
The light creates a diagonal line through the picture leading towards the outside world where we can see waving shapes suggesting that activity is going on out there. This makes the room even more closed off. On the side of the bed we see a black tray with a white teapot, the lid is held by a piece of iron or rope, a roll of toilet paper, pieces of wrinkled toilet paper, and behind the woman we see the bed covers nicely folded. All this seems to show that someone is looking after her. The pose of the woman suggests waiting, endless waiting. Both the first and second image create the impression that the life of the woman is reduced to a ‘cased in’, ‘cocoon-like’ existence where life is reduced to waiting.
In the third photograph black and white strongly contrast. The light only reveals the face, the pillow she rests on and a part of her arm. The skin of her arm is wrinkled. Her eyes look dry and withdrawn. Her face gives the impression of parchment, as if the body is already mummified. The hairlines contrast with the wrinkles on the woman’s forehead; the hair of the woman is nicely combed. Again we can suggest that someone is looking after her, taking care of her. In spite of the fact that her life is now even more reduced to waiting for the end to come, the image we see is not an image of hopelessness or despair. It is a peaceful image of care and love.
Figure 4. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 5. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 5. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 6. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
In the next three photographs the woman has died. The grandmother’s life is now in a transitional stage. We follow the process of preparing the body. The white uniform of the person preparing the body contrasts with the black clothing of the death person. The vertical line of the jacket of the person taking care, and the horizontal line of the stretcher again ‘case in’ the body. The metal tweezers contrast with the fluffy cotton balls. The lifeless body has become an object. In this sterile environment the wedding ring unexpectedly stands out as a strong symbol for life and love and family. Again we recognize the caring for and taking care as an ongoing process. In the next photograph we see the corpse with the long hair spread out, the headrest lying on the chest. The hair gives a special effect. The picture is shown upside down. We get the impression that the body has lifted off, flying in the air. The juxtaposition between this photograph and the next one, showing the corpse in detail, enhances the effect of passing on, and of the idea that the spirit is leaving the physical body, and is now flying above. Life is floating towards a hazy world. Finally, in the last photograph, we see the dead body in peace and tranquillity, in a serene pose. The head resting on the headrest is wrapped up in a warm cap evoking the feeling of cosines, her body covered with black and white tissue. The neat fine lines of the ravels from the white tissue, the fine folds in the black material and the straight lines of the knitted cap make the deeply wrinkled face of the woman stand out telling us her life story. We are left with deep feeling of respect.
Figure 7. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 8. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
Figure 9. Wang Youshen, Before and after grandmother passed away © Courtesy of the artist
The final three photographs deal with the fact that life goes on after a beloved person has died. Three photographs in colour evoke the harsh reality after the grandmother has gone. But the pictures also symbolize how Wang Youshen tries to keep his grandmother with him, by way of photography. After the grandmother has disappeared from reality, all that is left is memory and photographs. The process of photography itself becomes symbol of passing away and coming back. By developing the photographs, by washing them, he brings back his grandmother. We see the first picture of the dead body being washed in tray of chemical developing liquid. The cold green light in the room is mirrored in the liquid. The tweezers holding the picture seem a continuation of the tweezers in the picture, putting forward the idea of continuation or even worlds within worlds. The square tiles in the square metal basin now square in the picture of the grandmother. The reflection of the picture in the round metal tube evokes the feeling as if the spirit of the grandmother is still there. But the machine-like object in red and green makes reality tangible and cold. The second picture shows the development of the picture of the prepared peaceful and tranquil dead body. The cold green light of the previous picture is now replaced by warm red. In the background we detect objects that look as if they are burnt, reminding us of burning things for the dead in ancestor worship practices. The red light of the surroundings reflects in the metal tweezers driving away the coldness. In the last photograph Wang Youshen sits on one side of the bed, in a white room with bare walls. Like in his grandmother’s house the only object in the room is the bed. Now the bed is covered with pictures of the grandmother while she was still alive. On the floor pictures are spread out like footsteps on a pathway, as if the grandmother has silently slipped away. Wang Youshen seems to carefully arrange and select the photographs of his grandmother when still alive. In holding one of the
photographs in his hand, he connects with her. She is not gone; she is there with him. Wang Youshen and the grandmother both ‘sit’ on opposites sides of the bed. The bed becomes a symbol of continuation. Whereas in the first series the grandmother sits on the bed, in the final series Wang Youshen sits on the bed, with the images of his grandmother.
The passage of life and death is mirrored in the picture arrangement: the photograph of the woman in her almost mummified state rests on the side of the bed; those on the floor depict the dead body. The set up can be read as Wang Youshen supporting and accompanying his grandmother on her way to the hereafter and establishing a connection between them.
Melissa Chiu claims that artists like Wang Youshen make little overt references to Chinese traditions.28 Nevertheless, when we look at these pictures with the Chinese ancestor tradition in mind,
it may be no coincidence that Wang Youshen uses the numbers three and nine. Since ancient times the
kowtow was performed for ancestors and high-ranking officials. The highest form of kowtow was to
kneel down three times each time kowtowing three times, resulting in nine. The pre-Imperial classic, the Zhou Li (周礼) or Rites of Zhou describes the ‘nine salutations’ (jiubai 九拜). In the Qing dynasty the ‘three kneelings and nine knockings of the head’ (sangui jiukou 三跪九叩) became obligatory at imperial audiences.29 Today to kowtow three times remains the way to honour a deceased person.
The number three is also symbolic in what a filial son should do in mourning his parents as Confucius prescribes it: “When a pious son is mourning for a deceased parent, he is choked with tears, but does not wail with a prolonged sobbing; in performing the ceremony he pays no attention to his appearance; his words are simple and unpolished; he feels uneasy to wear fine clothes; he takes no pleasure in listening to the music; he has no appetite for food, including delicacies; all this reflects his real sentiment of grief and sorrow. Three days after the death of his parents, he begins to have food, thereby the people are taught that the living should not be injured because of the dead, and the mourning must not be carried so far as to destroy the life of the living: this is the rule set by the sages. The duration of mourning does not exceed three years, thus showing that there must be an end to the mourning.”30
What comes to mind in looking at the series is the process of dying and bringing back the grandmother through photography. Death is not a final end, the cycle of life and death is ongoing. Death is a passage from one state to another. The passage is emphasized in the format of a series of pictures. In viewing the series the spectator has to spend time. The passing of time is not only present in the pictures; it is also part of the viewing process. In looking at the pictures one by one, in observing and analyzing the process of aging, death and post-death the viewer becomes part of the process and cycle of life and death.
The title also suggests that death is not the end. The Chinese title is Wo nainai qu shi qian
hou/ 我那奶去世前後 is translated into English as Before and After my grandmother passes away. The
term ‘qian hou’ literally means ‘before after’, but it can also be translated as ‘around’ or ‘about’. If we 28. Chiu, 2006, p. 210.
29. Endymion Wilkinson, Chinese History. A Manual, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs Series, 52, 2000, 107.
30. Fu Genqing, Liu Ruixiang, Lin Zhihe, The Classical of Filial Piety (Xiao Jing), Shandong: Shandong Friendship Press 1998, 33.
translate the title as Around the time my grandmother passed away the concept of ‘the end’ or a particular state of being before and after becomes less explicit.
Photographs in photographs
The artist explores the medium of photography itself. Claire Roberts states: “The series prompts the viewer to consider the nature of photography itself, the tension between documentary and conceptual photography, and ideas of public and private, objective and subjective, material and spiritual.”31
Photography serves the purpose of bringing back the deceased family member. The washing of the pictures evokes the idea of passage and ongoing. The process of developing pictures highlights the function of pictures as memory. In the last picture, with multiple photographs in his photograph, Wang Youshen stages himself as a photographer. He connects his personal fate with that of his grandmother. We can interpret the photographs in photographs as worlds within worlds and realities within realities, or ancestor’s presence in the reality we live in.
Remembering ancestors
Wang Youshen’s work presents a reflection on life and death, on body and spirit, on caring for family members and on the relation between those who have passed away and those who are left behind. The reflection is philosophical, but warm and engaged. Wang Youshen’s series reflects on the process of accompanying and supporting his family member in life and death and on his relation with his grandmother. Looking at this series of photographs reveals that there is a connection with the context they are created in, a context that is influenced by shared traditions of descent.
Jeanne Boden is not a person of one world. Some people know her as a writer, researcher of Chinese
art and culture; others know her as a leader, cross-cultural expert, lecturer, trainer and coach. A Chinese friend once called her a deer, hopping between worlds. For Jeanne all these worlds overlap. Her most recent publication is Contemporary Chinese Art: Post-socialist, Post-traditional, Post-colonial (AS¨P, 2015)
Email: jeanne@jeanneboden.com
