"Those on the brink of being forgotten will soon transform into hues and light, ultimately evolving into the fertile ground of imagination."

The publication of this photography album was initiated by the publisher Xu Ning and was released by his art platform "YT Pictures" in early 2018. At that time, I had concluded my 8-year life in New York and returned to Beijing. I began organizing some photos taken between 2010 and 2017. The original intentionwas to use this photography collection as a means to explore the subtle relationship between the physiological and psychological motivations behind (at least my personal) photographic behavior, as well as the interplay between imagery and my personal memories. The photos in the collection were taken in Beijing, by the sea in Tangshan, Hebei, in the central oil fields of He Nan, the old town of Yu Men in Gan Su, in the cities of Georgia and Pennsylvania in America as well as in the Czech Republic, Poland, Singapore, Pyongyang in North Korea and Havana. The second part, "Ghost Memories," includes photographs taken in different cities around the world.

“那些即将被遗忘的，行将变成色彩和光线，并终将成为想象的沃土。”

这本摄影画册的问世，是由出版人徐宁发起并由他的“云图映画”艺术机构于2018年初出版。当时，我结束了在纽约长达8年的生活，回到北京后我开始整理那些拍摄于2010年至2017年间的照片。最初的动机是透过这本摄影集来探索（至少我个人的）摄影行为背后生理/心理动机以及影像和（我的）私人记忆之间微妙的关系。影集中的照片拍摄于北京，河北唐山海边，河南中原油田，甘肃的玉门老城，以及美国纽约市，佐治亚，宾夕法尼亚等等地方，还有捷克，波兰，新加坡，朝鲜平壤，古巴哈瓦那，不一而足。第二部分“幽灵回忆”包括了在世界不同城市拍摄的照片。

Work Title：FAMILIARS (+ work number)
Year：2010 ~ 2018
Work Dimension：110cmx110cm or 150cmx150cm
Edition: 3+1AP

作品名称：似曾相识 (+ 作品号)
年份：2010 ~ 2018
作品尺寸：110cmx110cm 或者 150cmx150cm
版号: 3+1AP

Summer 2015. I drove from New York down the eastern seaboard towards Miami in high anticipation of all the images that I would be shooting. Yet after being on the road for many days, driving along Route 95, neither churches or houses, men or women of any race, nothing served to pique my interest. Eventually, it was the dark floral curtains in a motel next to a highway in Georgia that inspired me to take a photograph. It took a moment for me to realise this was because I was unable to find any of my memories here. I recognised then that photography is all about the search for some image in your own memory. It could be a space, an object, a colour or a light, but we photograph to repair or to resuscitate some image in our memory (or perhaps even in our subconscious) that is about to fade away. It is just like taking medicine so that our ebbing lives can last longer. We don’t have any interest in capturing any image that isn’t in our memory, even a beautiful church won’t interest me as much as a dilapidated classroom.

Emotions are memories, imagination is like recall. What inspires us to press the shutter has almost no connection with representing truth, we are merely searching amongst reality to try and find an image we once knew. This is what inspires me to continue forging ahead holding my camera, just like a ghost who searches for the previous life he cannot return to, hoping that at some place, in some moment, he can be re-united with the image buried deep in his memory. We are always re-building the world of our imagination, and have never really been interested in reality. Not even a little.

Thinking back to that dusky night in the 80s, the uniformed men and brightly clad women standing by the railroad have already become so faded they blend into the dark blue twilight. Row after row of railroad sleepers appear on the horizon almost like curtain blinds, opened neatly and with dark red flowers embroidered on top. After thirty years, the fear of that night has turned into a warm recollection, you have started polite small talk with the enemy in your memories, and eventually shook hands and made your peace. We are not truthful to our memories, we never have been. We are unable to forget them, but they became diluted, their shapes and colours and lights all changed. When you go back to remember, they have already decomposed to become fertile ground for your imagination.

二零一五年夏天，我沿着美国东海岸从纽约驱车前往迈阿密，我满心期待可以拍摄很多照片。经过了多日路程，95号洲际公路沿途的教堂，房子，遇到的白人，黑人，男人，女人，无论如何也无法激发我拍摄的兴趣。在佐治亚州高速路边一间旅店内，一面带有暗花的百褶布窗帘让我第一次有了拍摄的念头。在某一刻我忽然意识到：这里根本无法找到我的记忆，我发觉摄影的动机纯粹是为了寻找记忆中的某个影像，可能是一个空间，一个物体，或者一种颜色，一道光线，我们拍照是为了修补和激活记忆中或潜意识中逐渐衰退的影像，就像通过吃药来延续衰退的生命一样，我们不会有兴趣去拍摄记忆中没有的东西，哪怕它是一座华丽的教堂，也不如一间破旧的教室能激发我的兴趣。

情感就是记忆，想象等于回忆。我们拍照的动机似乎与映射现实毫无关系，我们仅仅是在现实中寻找一些似曾相识的影像，这让我拿起相机不断前行，像是一个幽灵寻找他不可回到的前身，期待着在某个时刻，某个地点，和记忆深处的某个影像再次重逢；我们从来都是在重建想象中的世界，也没有对现实发生过哪怕一次兴趣。

再次回忆起八十年代末那个傍晚的时候，那些铁路旁穿制服的男人们和彩色衣服的女人们已经模糊不清，融入到那天灰蓝色的夜晚中，一排排重复的铁道枕木像是天际线上整齐地被人拉开的百褶窗帘，上面绣着一朵朵暗红色花朵。时隔三十年，那次恐惧竟然变成了一种温暖的回忆，你和记忆中的敌人已经开始温柔地寒暄并最终握手言和。我们没有忠诚于我们的记忆，从来就没有过。我们无法让那些存在过的记忆被遗忘，稀释，变成形状，色彩或者光线，当你再次去回忆的时候，它早已腐烂并已经化作想象的沃土。