Photography Artist
The Best Viewpoint of Nature
The Best Viewpoint of Nature is about how we perceive and consume nature in the modern world.
Landscape photography is pretty much the same as ideal landscape paintings in the 17th century in terms of arranging elements carefully to make a perfect scene.
Although we take photos of the natural landscape, photography is definitely not a straightforward depiction of what nature looks like. We carefully arrange the elements just like the ideal landscape paintings. A successful landscape photograph needs delicately composition, sunlight position, and hours of post-production, which all bring the photographs far away from nature itself.
We love landscape for its openness, wildness, and we look for scenes of tranquility and the sublime. But all these representations and terms are even constructed by humankind.
Our gaze at nature is an analogy of the male gaze at a female.
What is nature's actual appearance?
I try to take some landscape photos that are not typical of our mass taste of the beautiful and serene nature. Although they are straightforward photographs, there is a sense of disturbing and insecurity instead of a peaceful landscape.
The second part of this work challenges how we consume and perceive nature, including in the art world.
We are not experiencing nature in the old way. We access to nature by going to the galleries, museums, watching tv shows, surfing on social media and other digital devices, even with virtual reality.
We are experiencing fake nature.
The photos in this group all contain some landscape, or in other words, representation and images of the landscape.
As the modern world develops faster and faster, nature is supposed to be more easily brought to us, whereas we are going much further away from nature.
Standing in front of a landscape photograph, have you ever thought about what you are really looking at?
Why are you standing here to look at an image of nature? To appreciate the pure beauty of nature, experience the constructed ideal of nature, get relief in the sublime of nature, act as an environmentally friendly person, or just feel nostalgic for the time when we were nature's little kids?