Ever since I started in photography, I never doubted the authentic/fictional nature of my own photographs--until just recently.
Back when I was a student, I was taught: history is nothing but a deception, a one-sided story, something floating, neither real nor false. Very early on, I believed this to be so, but it is only recently that I came to perceive it for myself.
It's the same with photography. I've been a photojournalist on and off for several years, and I've also tried to record the life history of a Bunun village. It's been said that today's news is tomorrow's history, but will tomorrow's history be the way I know and believe it to be today? The answer is naturally a disheartening "no," and it is this dejection which has brought me my recent doubts about photography.
Or to be more precise, my doubts about photography as record.
When I was growing up they told me of photography's mission of record, and later making a record became a kind of moral discipline, a spiritual requirement, a source of meaning; but like a fool, for the sake of making a record for society I consciously or unconsciously ignored my own self, and regarded the fictional/abstract as an evil spirit in the darkness. Or perhaps it was my own ignorance and misunderstanding which led to my state of confusion and perplexity, drifting, some times afloat and sometimes sinking.
What am I? Where am I? Amid their confusion, everyone today is busily searching, and I even more so.
"Start from what's in front of your eyes!" I told myself. Find authenticity among the fictional, affirm the fiction in authenticity, find an empty space to slot myself into among the confused mass of society. So I started from there. Photography is not merely taking pictures-it should be creating images.
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