影会倒计时丨来自亚洲的8本书

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《一目了然的事》是Kapil Das对那些定义印度的模式化形象和成见的耐心回顾。该书由从过去近十年内拍摄的数千张照片中严格挑选的照片组成，通过自然风景照、街道景观照、人像照和日常生活场景照全方位地展示印度。其中包括携带垫子的男子、停歇在树叶上的甲虫这种看似很简单的照片。

《一目了然的事》一书中的内容不是凭年代或地理区位排序，而是凭直觉、幽默和心境。该书可以看成是反应杂乱的日常生活的图片档案，书中收入的照片用Das本人的话来说“源自某个地方但又不属于这个地方”。

在受训成为民族学者期间，Das抛开严格的分析法、用照片捕捉那些被他视为能通往拍摄对象（以及他自己）心灵大门的短暂遭遇。意外发现珍奇事物的本领肯定无法真正启发Das，但却让这本书的书名带上了诙谐的讽刺意味。《一目了然的事》听起来很诱人，但又遥不可及。

作为一个擅长讲故事的人，Kapil Das利用照片影像展现了自己的一段生活经历。当Kapil坚定地注视着一样东西时，既不代表他害羞，也不代表他喜欢多愁善感。相反，他只是想揭开面纱、用幽默和尖锐的手法展现自己的生活。Devika Daulet-Singh是Photoink的创始人。

Something So Clear is Kapil Das’ patient look behind the visual clichés and stereotypes that have come to define India. Consisting of a tight edit from thousands of photos taken over nearly one decade, the book shows the spectrum of India through land- and streetscapes, portraits and everyday happenings, some as deceptively simple as a man carrying a mattress or a beetle resting on a leaf.

Sequenced not chronologically or geographically but by intuition, humor and mood, Something So Clear is an archive of impressions that embraces the chaos of life and contains images that in Das’ words are “from a place but not of a place.”

While trained as an ethnologist, Das casts aside a strictly analytical approach to capture ephemeral encounters in photos he deems “psychological portals” into his subjects’ (and his own) self. Serendipity not certainty guides Das and makes the title of this book delightfully ironic: “something so clear” is an alluring yet unreachable ideal.

As a raconteur, Kapil Das employs the photographic image to reveal an abstracted experience of his life. Kapil’s unflinching gaze is neither shy nor interested in exploring any sentimentality. Instead, he offers a view of his life, skinned to its bones and laced with both humor and poignancy. Devika Daulet-Singh, founder of Photoink.

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该书是一本由Park Jongwoo创作的关于朝韩非军事区的图片合集。朝韩非军事区是划分朝鲜与韩国界限的一片狭长的土地。这条位于两国之间的缓冲带约248公里长、4公里宽，距离首尔60公里。尽管名叫非军事区，该地区实则是世界上军事化程度最高的边界区域之一，自1953年朝鲜战争结束以来一直处于严格的休战状态。

2009年，Jongwoo应韩国国防部之邀用资料纪录朝韩非军事区。该地区通常不允许平民靠近，也没有全面的图片纪录。虽然事实证明该项目是一项涉及详细谈判和规划的复杂行政事务，但Jongwoo还是严格地履行自己的使命，直至2012年。一种让人难以置信的紧张关系给Jongwoo的系列作品赋予了活力：朝韩非军事区的军事存在（透过带刺铁丝网、哨站、武装部队可以看出暴力事件不时发生）与自然之美两者间的强烈对比。这片景色多样的土地因其与世隔绝的状态得以保留原貌；如今，它被公认为世界上保存最完好的温带栖息地之一以及部分濒危植物群和动物群的家园。

战争结束了，但民族分裂还未结束。作为一名生活在世界上唯一一个分裂国家的摄影师，我感受到了朝韩非军事区内平静而怪异的氛围。没有尽头的带刺钢丝网不仅分隔了朝鲜和韩国，同时也在两国人民之间划上了一道心理界限。

This book is Park Jongwoo’s photo-documentation of the Demilitarized Zone or DMZ of Korea, the strip of land dividing North and South Korea. About 248 km long, 4 km wide, and 60 km from Seoul, this buffer zone between the two countries is, despite its name, one of the most militarized borders in the world, operating under strict armistice conditions following the end of the Korean War in 1953.

In 2009 the South Korean Ministry of National Defense invited Jongwoo to document the DMZ, an area normally inaccessible to civilians and of which no comprehensive photographic record existed. Jongwoo did so rigorously until 2012, although the project proved a complex administrative undertaking involving detailed negotiations and planning. An unlikely tension energizes Jongwoo’s series: the contrast between military presence (seen through barbed wire, outposts, and armed troops which have led to sporadic violence), and the natural beauty of the DMZ. For the isolation of this diverse landscape has allowed it to largely revert to its original state; today it is recognized as one of the world’s best preserved temperate habitats and home to several endangered species of flora and fauna.

The war is over, but our national division is not. As a photographer living in the world’s only divided country, I’ve felt the peaceful but strange atmosphere inside the DMZ. The endless barbed-wire fences not only bordering North and South but also drawing a psychological boundary between both citizens of segregated Korea.

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对于我们来说，摄影和科学究竟有多可靠？赵仁辉在《世界动植物漫游指南》中探究了这些问题。这本书看起来像是一份关于动植物的真实目录，但事实是它纯属虚构。

《世界动植物漫游指南》表面“记录”了55种被人类操纵的动物、植物及环境（但事实上并未被操纵），并且试验了无数种人类企图改变自然的方法。指南中有一些非常有趣的生物，它们以一种意想不到的方式进化以适应这不断变化的世界。这些生物包括几乎看不到犄角的犀牛，还有靠人喂食的猴子。这一体系中的其他生物都是人类干预和基因突变工程的产物。它们为从科学研究到装饰要求等多种目的服务，例如：人造明胶葡萄、转基因西红柿和“不碎”鸡蛋。

所有生物都在不断适应着它们面临的各种压力，包括来自捕食者、污染和环境改变的压力。然而，毫无疑问，人类就是威胁其他生命形式的罪魁祸首。《世界动植物漫游指南》提醒着我们这样一个事实，尤其是对于“真相”保持批判的、谨慎的、讽刺的态度。

在摄影上，赵仁辉的实践都来自于对于自然世界的观察和研究。但那不是直接的根据，相反，他用叙述的方式构建和区分主体的层次，将现实和虚构交织在一起，在读者的内心播下疑问的种子，使之思考在他们面前的图像是否客观存在 。

To what extent can we trust photography and science? Robert Zhao Renhui explores these questions in A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World, which appears to be an authentic catalogue of plants and animals but is in fact entirely fictitious.

Renhui’s guide ostensibly “documents” 55 different animals, plants and environments that have been manipulated by man but do not appear to be, and examines the myriad ways in which humans are altering nature. Here are curious creatures that have evolved in often unexpected ways to cope with our changing world, including rhinoceroses with barely visible horns and monkeys dependent on food handed out by humans. Other organisms in the series are the products of human intervention, mutations engineered to serve various purposes from scientific research to the desire for ornamentation, such as man-made gelatin grapes, genetically modified tomatoes and “unbreakable” eggs.

All living things constantly adapt to the various pressures they face including predators, pollution and environmental change. Yet the human species has undeniably emerged as the main perpetrator of the dangers that threaten the survival of other life forms. A Guide to the Flora and Fauna of the World reminds us of this fact, and above all to retain a critical, cautious and ironic attitude to the “real.”

Primarily photographic, Zhao’s practice is drawn from observations and research into the natural world. But it is not direct documentation; instead, he constructs and layers the subject with narratives, interweaving the real and the fictional, sowing a seed of doubt in viewers about the objectivity of the image before them.

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2015年8月到12月间，Woong Soak Teng探访了人造花园城市新加坡，并拍下了这些被木桩支撑的树木。正如世界其他许多城市一样，新加坡也进行了城市规划，通过把树木移栽到合适的位置来营造都市风景。为了营造一个多产而具有审美趣味的生活环境，长久以来人们都在把自然改造成自己期待的模样。

这部作品以树木各种各样的（甚至是奇怪的）艺术捆扎方式为特点，展现出与树木及其不受关注的支撑结构的亲密接触。如今树木和它的支撑结构都已成为人类生活环境中不可缺失的一部分。Woong Soak Teng坚持基于树木的位置对其进行详细正面地描绘，这让她的作品具有了地形意义，从而为主题赋予了几近抽象的优雅感。

“虽然用木桩支撑树木是随处可见的现象，但是人们通常不会注意到它们。它们就像人类与生俱来的控制本能一样。”

Between August and December 2015, Woong Soak Teng explored the man-made garden city of Singapore and made portraits of its staked trees. As in many cities around the world, here trees are uprooted and relocated to conform to a controlled cityscape determined by urban planning. As part of an attempt to construct productive and aesthetic living environments for ourselves, nature has long since been subjected to manipulation at the mercy of human hands.

Featuring a diversity of (sometimes unorthodox) approaches to the art of tree-tying, this book presents an intimate encounter with the trees and their much-overlooked supporting structures, which have become an integral element of the human habitat. Teng’s consistent, frontal approach and detailed captions based on the trees’ locations lend her works a topographical quality which complements the almost abstract elegance of her subjects.

"Tree staking is ubiquitous yet largely unnoticed. Just like our innate human instinct to control."

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Yukari Chikura的这部作品记录了有着1,300年历史的日本传统庆典仪式“祭堂”。在经历了父亲猝死、自身的危机事件和2011年日本本州岛海域地震这一连串悲剧后，Chikura回想起父亲在梦中对她说过的话：“去我很久以前呆过的、藏在白雪深处的村庄吧。”因此她拿上相机，带着朝圣般的心情（第一次带着这种心情的旅行）前往日本的东北部，最后完成了这部作品。这个村庄在白雪和雾气的笼罩下呈现出一种梦幻般的银色，Chikura就是在这里中发现了祭堂。每年1月2日，来自不同村落的居民聚集在一起，以祭祀舞蹈来祈祷获得来年的好运，这便是被称为“祭堂”的祭祀活动。表演者们通过神圣的舞蹈来供奉神明，并接受彻底的净化。通过抽象的雪景照片与祭堂表演所用的复杂精细的面具及服装照片的结合，Chikura描绘出了祭堂活动参与者们的文化多样性以及他们创造集体记忆、保证祭堂传承的共同心愿。

为了保护珍贵而重要的舞乐，当地的人们克服了不计其数的困难。他们在失败后一次又一次爬起的姿态，赋予了我生活的希望与勇气。

This book is Yukari Chikura’s preservation of the 1300-year-old Japanese ritual festivity “Zaido.” Following a series of tragedies including her father’s sudden death, her own critical accident and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Chikura recalls how her father came to her in a dream with the words: “Go to the village hidden deep in the snow where I lived a long time ago.” And so with camera in hand she set off on a restorative pilgrimage to northeast Japan (the first of numerous journeys), which resulted in this book.Chikura arrived at the village, surreally silver in the snow and mist, and there discovered Zaido, where inhabitants from different villages gather on the second day of each new year and conduct a ritual dance to induce good fortune. The performers dedicate their sacred dance to the gods and undergo severe purifications. Combining photos of snowscapes that border on abstraction with images of the intricate masks and costumes of Zaido, Chikura depicts the cultural diversity of the participants as well as their common bond in creating collective memory and ensuring the survival of this ritual.

The sight of these people—who overcome all obstacles, who stand up over and over again after every fall, all for the sake of protecting something so precious and vital— has given me the courage and hope to live again.