CHARLES WHITE – A RETROSPECTIVE (个展)

Kyoto, 2016 , Hand-colored black and white photo,  148.5 x 139.2 cm

Shi Guowei studied photography at Fachhochschule, Dortmund. For his graduation, he took inspiration from the technique of hand-coloring photographs influenced from his parent’s generation. Through processes of using Kodak C-print, he first chemically develops the black and white print onto photographic paper – this becomes the ‘base color’ – before final hand painting the final layers to complete it. It is a traditional hand technique, which shares more than one hundred years of history with black and white photography – and it reappears again to beguile a new audience. For a long period of time, photography has become associated as an ‘objective’ form of reproducing objects. Taken this idea further, today the photographic technologies have reached a point of practically becoming an omnipotent presence in our lives. Shi Guowei uses his own work to challenge this point – ‘There is still distance between color perceived with the naked eye, which far surpasses that of the lens. Color obtained in color photography still falls short to the vivid qualities of nature – in fact it pales in comparison. On the contrary, through the mind and its memory of the photographed scene, color is mixed and applied according to what feels appropriate to the scene – adding lucidity to the image as well as a heightened accuracy.’ As the mind opens, the artist uses the eye to photographically capture images of interest – information is then stored in the memory of a ‘micro-chip’. It involves a continuous accumulation of things, but also a perpetual procedure of screening, verification, and layering, which together enhances the process of image recognition.