One of the starting points for this project was thinking through how to photograph Jingdezhen's ceramics. Picking up a tiny cup or bowl in one of the city's galleries invariably means pulling it closer; an effort to look *into*, and sometimes, *through* a piece. In this respect, galleries offering pieces for sale hold an advantage over the museum, as it is that *combination* of holding and visually admiring that seems to entrance and spellbind. Many would declare it to be an emotional response, and small-box dents on the credit card suggest it's a far from rational pastime. How then do you convey that to someone who doesn't have such a piece in their hand? How do you share the amazement at the craft of such intricate detail? Or the simplicity of form and sense of refinement in what is ostensibly an everyday utensil, a cup? In this regard, the results you pull up on a google image search for Chinese or Jingdezhen porcelain are somewhat perplexing. Travel bloggers, news stories and auction houses will account for the majority of the results, with the balance coming from museum or scholarly publications. Images of individual items will often be the domain of the latter, whereby pieces are captured for documentation or 'illustrative purposes'. --- ![[googe chinese ceramics.png]] --- Much like the passport photograph or police station mug-shot, these museum and publication images abide by a particular aesthetic. Face the camera, use even and neutral lighting, and place the item or person against a plain background. It is a genre of photography focused on objectivity and reproducibility, and in ways that are intended to minimise empathy, charm or beauty. The ceramics of Jingdezhen deserve better. Long flights are a great time to ponder such ideas. And it was while on board, admiring the fragile contents of my small-box purchase, that I began to wonder, what if? Would it work if? How would you best capture....? It has been a long road to get to the images below, and I will return to some of that process in future updates. But to kick things off, here is an example: of how i want to go from this..... ![[Update 1 p10.jpg]] --- to this... ![[Update 1 P3.png]] ![[Update 1 P4.png]] --- To visit Petra, the Pyramids or the temples of Angkor is to be amazed by scale, the sense of awe, and to stand there asking how on earth was this built? Monumental architecture captivates. Here then, I wanted to play with scale. Might we think of a cup standing less than 3cm high in such ways? ![[Update 1 P1.png]] ![[Update 1 P5.png]] --- Bear in mind these are low-quality screenshots of very high resolution images. And indeed, in this era of digital cameras, resolution is everything. Or at least it can be everything if we want to look *into* a piece to understand it, understand the intensely careful labour of the hand and brush, or better understand the unique beauty that arises from unpredictable physics and chemical reaction. ![[Update 1 p7.png]] ![[Update 1 p14.png]] ![[Update 1 p12.png]] --- I'll stop there, more will follow. Tim Singapore | 08-02 --- [[Update 2]]