The Ends
of the World
Deserve Witnesses
Jing Huang
A good photograph renders the reality and surreal expression intertwining together.
It is close to reach the idealistic ecstasy where everything has nothing to do with ineradicable concepts.
I come from Shenzhen,a city in South China, and I first learnt how to paint when I was a kid. But when I first shot photographs, I found that it made me more enthusiastic than painting. I am fond of photography since then; I studied at Guangzhou Academy of Art, majoring in Photography and Digital.
In my opinion, a good photograph depends on your state of mind when you shoot. It’s like keeping still and in deep meditation to get a balance, a link between you, the situation you are in and the scene in your photograph: tranquil but powerful, with strong potential energy.
This image feels surreal to me. It was shot during a trip to Gulangyu Island in Xiamen. The stone is called ‘Gulang Stone’, a well-known tourist attraction. Hundreds of people have taken souvenir photos at this spot. Some even climb to the top of the stone. However, whoever took these photos had to stay at the foot of the stone, and whoever struck the pose had to lower his/her head, and only got a souvenir photo without their face, but standing in a posture of solemn reverence instead. Suddenly, an image appeared to me. It seemed like the people being photographed were mourning something under the crooked tree. The surreal scene made me shoot this photograph: arranged as a melancholy, it had an impact on me.
I like improvisational creation without any theme, so that I can capture any fleeting possibility randomly. Sometimes, I know that I spot the right picture while shooting, because I am aware of the concentration I highly focus on the shooting, and the pleasant sensation I’m pulled into while capturing a moment.
This image belongs to ‘Pure of Sight’, a series created during my college years. All the photographs in this series try to express dramatic emotions.
I am always ready to make a photograph at any time. I keep my camera on all the time and make sure I maintain a gesture that I can lift up my camera to shoot as easy as possible. I ‘wear’ the camera all day long, except for in the shower and during sleep, to make sure that I can shoot when I meet something special or that matched my mood.
I usually select my photographs so that utilitarian considerations and superficial entanglements may be ruled out as much as possible.
The Ends of the World Deserve Witnesses
I love mechanical design, mechanical watches, vintage cars, no to mention cameras. The mechanical design of Leica enchants me.
I have a great variety of cameras, but I have to say the Leicas are the most comfortable ones to hold. And they are exactly the right ones I can ‘wear’ for a long time. The most important thing about them is that they are never out of order. My first Leica was a Leica M4-P, and then the IIIf , M2, M3, M9P, M240 that I use the most.
There is a funny story I want to share. It was my first year in college. Our teacher asked everyone in the class to buy a digital camera, as a tool to finish our homework for the whole time at college. I grabbed all my money, went to a camera shop and saw a Leica M4-P. I decided to buy it with all the money I had, and even had to get an advance on two months of living expenses. As a consequence, I had to borrow digital cameras the whole 4 years for the homework.
I do not regard photography as a tool to understand life. Instead, I believe photography is an expression, a feedback of my understanding of something that happened to me. If I had to give a tip to a young photographer to shoot a unique picture, I would say love philosophy, love wisdom.
LOBA Newcomer Award in 2011
Jing Huang received the Leica Oscar Barnack Newcomer Award in 2011 with his project "Pure of sight".
