以拍照为名的漫游式观察和记录Wandering observation and recording in the name of taking photos
12 三月 2025

文/张畯
(一)
一直跟着纯碱的朋友圈一条条看下来他行摄康巴的文字,每一条都活生生地冒着热气,都带着他对眼前即时信息冲击做出的反应和回馈。
这种以拍照为名的漫游式观察和记录,比人类学家为了适应某种解释范式所做的僵硬的民族志表述好看多了(想起英国人类学家马林诺夫斯基为《西太平洋上的航海者》最初所做的田野调查期间不得其门而入的苦闷),好看不仅是单纯文字上的洗练(估计是手机便签对当天见闻的随手记,篇幅因此而简短),更是文字所携带的现场气氛、声音、画面等等扑面而来的即视感。
三省交界、民族交汇地区特有一种混杂、游弋、异质的气息,你中有我我中有你,既相互嵌套又彼此疏离的离散型文化形态。这种特征从纯碱一路走一路看到的建筑、服饰、饮食、语言、交通等个各个方面显现出来。
没有想到,纯碱已经五进康区了。一次又一次,其实他并没有找到一个想象中“正宗”的康巴,而是发现了一个变异和消失中的康区,或者越来越混杂、魔幻、被自我改造和不断形塑中的康巴。就像王明珂的“十年寻羌”,最后找到的并非传统,而是变迁。
在纯碱随手记录的这些文字后面,引起我们进一步思考的是:什么是历史?什么是文化和美学?什么是少数民族?历史仅仅是停留在教科书里的那些东西吗?抽象意义上的社会和烟火味的民间是不是同一个社会?文化和美学只是被收藏在图书馆博物馆里的东西吗?用玻璃钢狮子、红金龙柱和金灿灿的铜皮建造的寺院算不算“文化”和“美学”?说着甘肃方言的出租车司机符合不符合我们对“藏民”的印象?……
在摄影史上,我们看到更多的作品仅仅吝啬地标注了拍摄时间和地点,摄影师本人关于作品拍摄过程的文字少之又少。而纯碱善于用生动的文字记录下他在路上的见闻,但这绝不是作品的“文字说明”或副产品,它的信息量比图像更大、更刺激,它是佐证图像并成为独立于影像的文学作品。这些文字的价值不但有助于我们理解他的作品,更深层地认识一位摄影师。更为后人对于一位摄影师的作品研究、作者研究留下了相当完善的资料。国内摄影师中,文图并驾齐驱、相得益彰的一位不得不提,他就是大家所认识的严明。两人文字的独特性和差异性,正是我们爱不释手、来者不拒的原因。
2021年10月13日

(二)
纯碱列举了藏区的几种角色身份和生活模式,也揭示了这种几乎封闭稳定的生活模式在现代和传统的混合跑道上,所遭遇的变化或保持的不变这变与不变,即是地方性与世界性之间犬牙交错的结果。很难下一个定论,变是好的,还是不变是好的。挡不住的东西终究还是要进来,血脉里面的东西终究会在代际间传承。单一或者多元,只要我们尊重每个人的生活、价值和信仰选择的自由,就是好的。作为文字或文学,挣开宏大叙事的挟持,自觉而持久地书写一个小地方的小人物、小事情,也是值得充分尊重的写作。
而那个无处不在的雪豹,则是一个身份模糊的存在,作者始终没有道破雪豹究竟是什么。它是动物雪豹,又不仅是动物雪豹。作为野生动物的雪豹?一个名叫“雪豹”的人?还是代替上帝行走在世间的“上帝之眼”?在作者那里,“雪豹”恐怕既代表未被驯服的自然野性,也寓意着被呵护和保留的最后圣地,更像是一个不肯死去的魂灵,逡巡着青海大地,观察着眼前的变化,审视着人类一手制造的生存危机。
或者,“雪豹”并不是一个实体,而是一个谜一般的幻象,是各种复杂身份的复合体、某些意象群的叠像,是在用语言构建起的世界中,又旁观着这世界的那个叙述者、纯碱–作者无时不在的影子。

(三)
去过N次青海湖了,还是被纯碱这些慢慢积攒的东西所吸引,都很短小、精致,简直是饥饿营销,还没看过瘾就没了,不得不回过头来反复地品。
纯碱的青海湖,装置,文字和影像三个部分,都跟青色的湖有关,跟湖边生活的人有关,跟他自己行行复行行有关。
特别是他那些写在拍摄路上的文字,既有灵魂出窍的时刻,也有大地上卑微的生灵。那些入木三分的文字有现场感,有大悲悯;有出世的修行,也有人间烟火;有高原的寒意,也有置身其中的温度。
这个青海湖边走来走去的人,他久久不愿离开,他在用青稞、酥油、秋天一样的文字喂养着自己,留在青色海的地老天荒。
文字不仅是文字,其实也是眼前的一幅幅画面和电影,看吧,这镜头感,这贴近大地的生计和抽身而去的信仰。

张畯,独立学者、摄影师、视觉艺术研究者。

Wandering observation and recording in the name of taking photos

by Zhangjun
(ONE)
Chunjian’s circle of friends has been following him one by one to read the words of his Kangba shooting, each of which is alive and steaming, carrying his reaction and feedback to the immediate information impact at hand.
This kind of wandering observation and recording in the name of photography is much better looking than the rigid ethnographic representations that anthropologists make to fit into an explanatory paradigm (think of the British anthropologist Malinowski’s agonizing inability to enter during his initial fieldwork for Voyagers in the Western Pacific), Beautiful is not only the simple text on the wash (it is estimated that the mobile phone note on the day of the news, the length is therefore short), but also the text carried by the scene atmosphere, sound, picture and so on.

The border area of three provinces and the intersection of nationalities has a unique mixed, wandering and exotic atmosphere, which is a discrete cultural form that is nested and separated from each other. This feature is evident from the architecture, clothing, food, language, transportation and other aspects that Chunjian sees along the way.
Unexpectedly, Chunjian has entered the five Kang district. Again and again, he did not actually find an imaginary “authentic” Kangba, but a Kang district that was mutating and disappearing, or a Kangba that was becoming more and more mixed, magical, self-reshaped and constantly shaped. Just like Wang Mingke’s “Ten years of searching for Qiang”, what he finally found was not tradition, but change.

Behind the words Chunjian casually recorded, we further ponder: What is history? What is culture and aesthetics? What is a minority? Is history just something that stays in textbooks? Are abstract societies and firework folk the same society? Are culture and aesthetics just things that are kept in library museums? Does a temple made of fiberglass lions, red and gold dragon pillars and golden copper skin count as “culture” and “aesthetics”? Does a taxi driver speaking Gansu dialect fit our image of a “Tibetan”? …
In the history of photography, we see more works with only stingy marks of the time and place of shooting, and the photographer’s own words about the process of shooting the work are very few. Chunjian is good at recording what he saw and heard on the road with vivid words, but this is by no means a “text description” or by-product of the work, its information is larger and more exciting than the image, it is supporting the image and becoming a literary work independent of the image. The value of these words not only helps us to understand his works, but also to know a photographer more deeply. More later generations for a photographer’s work research, author research left quite perfect information. Among the domestic photographers, the one who keeps pace with each other and complement each other has to mention that he is the Yan Ming known to everyone. The uniqueness and difference of the two characters is the reason why we love and reject everything.
October 13, 2021

(TWO)
Chunjian listed several roles and modes of life in Tibetan areas, and also revealed that this almost closed and stable mode of life has changed or remained unchanged on the mixed runway of modernity and tradition, which is the result of the interlocking of local and global. It’s hard to decide whether change is good or not. Things that can’t be blocked will eventually come in, and things in the blood will eventually be passed down between generations. Single or pluralistic is good as long as we respect each person’s freedom to choose his or her life, values and beliefs. As a text or literature, breaking away from the hostage of a grand narrative and writing consciously and persistently about small people and small things in a small place is also a writing worthy of full respect.
The ubiquitous snow leopard is a vague existence, and the author has not said what the snow leopard is. It’s an animal snow leopard, but it’s not just an animal snow leopard. Snow leopards as wild animals? A man named “Snow Leopard”? Or is it the “eye of God” that walks the earth instead of God? In the author’s view, the “snow leopard” probably represents not only the untamed wild nature, but also the last holy land that is cared for and preserved. It is more like a ghost that refuses to die, which standers the land of Qinghai, observing the changes in front of it, and examining the existential crisis created by human beings.
Or, “Snow leopard” is not an entity, but a mysterious illusion, a complex of various complex identities, the overlapping of some image groups, is in the world constructed with language, and the narrator of the world, Chunjian- the author’s ever-present shadow .

(THREE)
Have been to Qinghai Lake more times, or be attracted by Chunjian these slowly accumulated things, are very short, exquisite, is simply hungry marketing, have not seen the addiction is gone, have to go back and repeatedly product.
Chunjian’s Qinghai Lake, installation, text and image are all related to the azure lake, the people living on the lake, and his own walking and walking.
In particular, the words he wrote on the road to shoot both the out-of-body moments of the soul and the humble creatures on the earth. Those poignant words have a sense of scene, there are great compassion; There are born practice, there are human fireworks; There’s the chill of the plateau and the temperature of being in it.
The people walking around the Qinghai Lake, he was reluctant to leave for a long time, he used highland barley, shortening, autumn as the same words to feed himself, to stay in the blue sea of the end of time.
Words are not only words, in fact, they are also the pictures and movies in front of you, look, this sense of the mirror, this livelihood close to the earth and the belief of withdrawal.

Zhangjun An independent scholar, photographer, researcher of visual arts.