| The birth of photography can be traced to the camera obscura, a device dating all the way back to 400 B.C. Originally conceived of as an enclosed box with a tiny hole on one side for light to pass through, the camera obscura became the de facto aid for landscape painters who sought to transcribe an accurate portrait of reality; its mechanical eye recorded details unflinchingly. With the birth of the film camera, the camera obscura seemed to disappear from the scene. Luckily, in recent years China-based photographer Shi Guo-Rui has retrieved this ancient device from the annals of art history and put it back into the spotlight. |  |
Anita Tan
Shi Guo-Rui, Bird’s Nest, 2007. Unique camera obscura, gelatin silver print, 54.6 x 140.9 inches. Courtesy of 10 Chancery Lane Gallery.The birth of photography can be traced to the camera obscura, a device dating all the way back to 400 B.C. Originally conceived of as an enclosed box with a tiny hole on one side for light to pass through, the camera obscura became the de facto aid for landscape painters who sought to transcribe an accurate portrait of reality; its mechanical eye recorded details unflinchingly. With the birth of the film camera, the camera obscura seemed to disappear from the scene. Luckily, in recent years China-based photographer Shi Guo-Rui has retrieved this ancient device from the annals of art history and put it back into the spotlight. Utilizing a 10-by-10 enclosed tent, Shi meticulously burns panoramic images of scenic landscapes and architectural skylines onto light-sensitive paper. His large-scale photographs explore the vastness of space. They are the products of an arduous process: each image takes anywhere from 1.5 to eight hours to expose—not exactly the milliseconds required to take a picture with a digital camera.
Shi breathes in the history and spirit of each place he is capturing while visualizing the final image that will appear on paper. His pictures have been likened to recreations of emblematic Chinese sites. In 2004, the photographer completed The Great Wall and Shanghai Waterfront, two projects that took months of planning. Shi transformed one of the watchtowers on the Great Wall of China into a looming scepter of a photograph. Without the ease of automatic f-stop and shutter speed adjustments, Shi’s control of the image-making process was more difficult, leading him to shoot the image six times before settling on three acceptable copies. The resulting images preserve the structure of the monument and the surrounding landscape with fidelity, continuing the purity of form found in his earlier work. In Shanghai Waterfront, for example, the early colonial buildings of the Bund and the new high-rises of Pudong stand pristine against a black sky, creating a negative-like image.
A year after tackling China’s most famous symbols, Shi decided to recreate the highest mountain in the world using the same technique. This time, however, a special camera had to be built on site. The construction costs were well worth it: with a giant glacier shining in the foreground and a darker patch of mountain hiding in the back, the majestic quality of Shi’s Mount Everest is palpable. A sense of peace pervades.
There’s also something eerie about Shi’s photographs. Void of human activity and living creatures, his pictures offer a surreal and almost post-apocalyptic view of the world. Mount Everest is no longer peopled by climbers showing off their courage. The Great Wall is no longer a noisy tourist attraction. With this central absence resonating in each place, these sites are restored to their quiet origins.
Shi knows something about silent contemplation himself. After a fatal car accident in 1998 killed a friend and left Shi severely injured, the artist spent eight months meditating in the mountain temples of his birthplace, Shanxi. He was searching for an artistic process that would mirror his newfound appreciation for slow, patient living. With this in mind, it’s easy to see that Shi’s choice of the camera obscura makes sense. The amount of time it takes to burn images onto paper might seem agonizingly long for those of us used to the quick results of the instant snapshot, but the making of each photograph is a spiritual process for Shi. If it took so long for these monuments to be created, Shi seems to ask, why not take a little time in documenting them as well?
