In Song Yong Ping's photographs we see hopelessness, pessimism and submission turned upside down to express weakness and lowliness in ordinary people. I am particularly impressed by the photographs in black and white and somber grays that show his father lying in bed and staring at the ceiling, expressionless, while his mother half-watches television.

 

　　Their hair is left un-combed and their dress untidy as one would while awaiting one's last few moments on earth. It seems as if hope is lost completely. It seems worse than actual death. These photographs document the parents' acquiescence to death and the consequent grief of children who can do nothing but observe their end.

 

　　The first time I saw the photos I was moved by the despair and disappointment evoked by Song Yong Ping's works. In historical texts and literature, we often find death rendered poetically, to the point of being celebrated. For instance, the death of Jing Ke was solemn and stirring. Yu Ji and Lin Dayu died in sadness and beauty. The revolutionaries Liu Hulan and Jiang Jie sacrificed their lives and became martyrs. While Chen Tiejun and his wife made their deathbed their hearts were full of optimism. The anecdotes don't stop here. The idea of poetry, like the idea of death, derives from a belief system particular to one's epoch. Today, our historical background and value system provides that as mortal men, death always brings helplessness, despair and lowliness. The fatalistic conditions of life, a movement from birth to death, from illness to old age, are recognized and accepted by each one of us. We no longer know the grandeur, anticipation and solemnity of death and instead our contemporaries feel trepidation, pessimism, desperation, misery and even baseness as time passes. We may still admire the great deaths of lore, but in Song Yongping's photos we are delivered from the burden of a particular shame; a shame that might otherwise be evoked by the fear, the despair and the doubt that we will all experience in the face of our own deaths.

 

　　In a later series of photographs, Song Yong Ping juxtaposes a photograph of his parents in their youth dressed in revolutionary outfits against one of his half-naked parents, miserably old and sick, where the father is adorned with a urine catheter. Other photographs, which portray his parents holding a fish, are neither my favorite nor the favorites of people I know. Psychologically I cannot accept the portrait of his parents naked. It implies that the old couple had known cruel treatment in their lives. Song Yong Ping explained the photos like this, "In reality, my parents lives were much harder and rougher than what is depicted in the photographs. My parents and their generation had suffered too long to maintain any capacity to express their true feelings. They were used to hiding all of their feelings in their hearts. I was pressed to do the same. What I am doing is ridding myself of this pressure by giving people a window into the bleak life of my parents. Initially I tried to paint this, but just could not capture it with oils. I finally tried my unskilled hand with a camera. At first, I was unable to make photos that would honestly reflect their miserable lives. For example, the photograph of My Parents and a Fish derives from my feeling that they were living just like fish stranded by low tide. It is my fault if the works cannot be understood due to my poor photography skills."

 

　　The works can be better understood if we change our frame of reference. No one would otherwise see situations as miserable as a naked father bearing a urine-guiding tube, which however is the reality of existence. I am most fond of the photos showing the hopelessness of death. The viewer can imagine that one day such a fate will fall on him/her as well and can empathize with the subjects. As I understand, the despondency expressed by these photos is a confluence of the photographer's emotions, his filial love and sympathy as well as his hopelessness. Artists present art to an audience in order to share with them feelings. It is not enough to document misery. The artist must provide the things to be felt. One finds the misery of demise in hospitals everywhere. But that is not art. What we share with the author, what we perceive as his personal miseries, not the miseries themselves, is what renders Song Yongping's photographs sublime.

 

　　Song Yongping's parents passed away in quick succession while I was writing this essay. Song Yongping continued to take photos of his mother on her deathbed and then of his father's life as a widower. I am deeply impressed by the one showing his father completely despondent in his room with only a portrait of his former wife. Later, when his father died, Song Yongping took a shocking photo showing the bones and ash of his father next to the cremation furnace. It evokes the rather vulgar saying, "The death of a person is just like smoke disappearing into thin air." Lastly, the photo showing the messy room left by the parents is disturbing and sentimental. As Song Yong Ping put it, "It would have made me dreary and sad, whether my parents lived or left me. The former would have brought even more dreariness and sadness."

 

Li Xianting, Beijing 2001

 

Edited by Meg Maggio, 2004