作品介绍
以探索自我进入无我之境，方能见众生。
《一百个我》是由一百个人共同创作的系列作品合集，以图册和拼贴两种方式呈现，按照我和共同创作者们遇见的时间顺序排列。共同创作者们以作者本人为拍摄主体进行创作，用文字对他们拍摄的作品和他们认知中的“我”加以描述。
我相信，人首先要诞生自我意识，才能打破标签，最终实现与他人共情。类似于心理学中的镜像效应，在获得独立自我意识之前，人很难被称为拥有灵魂的独立个体，他们的一切行为受到社会关系与外部标准控制，虽然这个自我与外部世界间的关系，同样难以切割。意识到自我诞生后，我时常试图从世界中见到这个无形的自我。比起在早期作品中以他人投射自我，我选择直接面对自身的主体性；或更准确的，是在作为他者的客体中，重构某种被淹没的主体性。
在本作品最开始的构想中，我试图将自己变成被凝视被评论的客体，以摄影与视频的方式打破他人对自己的标签，重建自我。彼时的“自我”与外界是冲突的。一万张照片无法建构成一个完整的我。摄影和档案是碎片化的，照片具有一定欺骗性，它们无法展现出全部的事实。即使是庞大的数据堆叠，也无法完整详尽地解构一个人。
自我在社会关系中流动并不断蜕变。多年观察使我发现自己很容易被环境影响并被他人改变，在每个人面前展现出不同的性格。库利在《人性和社会秩序》里发表的“镜中我理论 (Looking Glass Self) ”中提出，每个人都是一面镜子，映射出他人对其自身的评价，而自我意识是在关系中，通过想像别人对自己的评价而获得的。马克思曾在《关于费尔巴哈的提纲》第六条中写出：“人的本质不是单个人所固有的抽象物……它是一切社会关系的总和。” 这些都指向自我与他我之间的关系。
在后续创作中，我不断从自己身上见到他人的影子。“自我”早已不是一个独一而自在的多棱锥，更像是包罗万象、海纳百川的小世界。
从某种意义上来说，摄影是一个非常亲密的行为，而我和很多人并没有那么亲密。因此，摄影成为了自我与他我共存与协调的某种隐喻，也折射出自我中的某种复杂性与社会性。照片中的我处于不同的关系中，某些人在现实生活中与我初次相见，大部分人多年未见，少数人和我有极多历史纠葛。那些情感和回忆会在不同时刻浮现在我的脑海里，并且无法避免地体现在照片的状态中。
遗憾的是，由于名额有限，并非所有对我重要的人，或对我的人生有影响的人都能够参与到这个项目中。由于本项目的拍摄制作周期长达一年，部分参与者与我的关系不幸继续前行，有些则不幸破裂。苏珊·桑塔格在《论摄影》中写道：“拍摄就是占有被拍摄的东西。它意味着把你自己置于与世界的某种关系中，这是一种让人觉得像知识，因而也像权力的关系。”在创作过程中，我会感受到自己被窥视和侵占。这不仅是思想和标准的强加，还有我的人生要被迫暴露于人前，无论我是否想让他人了解。某些部分是连我自己都不知道的，比如我脖子后面有颗痣，在一次拍摄中被发现。这都意味着，摄影将自我置于与世界的动态关系中，并不断改变和形成新的自我。把物品拍下来，在某种意义上，你就拥有了它。被拍摄和允许他人用文字评价自己一样，都是赋予他人权力的行为。我似乎在邀请创作的那一刻便默许了这些拍摄者们拥有我的一部分，也允许他们进入我的世界。
创作期间，我和拍摄者们共同探索了不同的摄影形式与风格，例如快照 (Snapshot) 、无表情美学、摆拍、街拍、观念摄影、实验艺术、行为艺术，或在视频中截图，或将我与他们的作品放在一起拍摄。有些人比较好奇我本人的一切，有些人更希望表达自己。我仅在过程中教导初学者如何使用相机，没有在构图、主题、概念或者选片上对创作者们进行任何影响，所有细节全部由他们自行决定。很多人在创作完成后对摄影产生了兴趣，但我对媒介始终保持着开放性的态度。
我试图在文字部分体现创作者对于自我的定义：他们给予自己什么名字，如何描述自己的行业岗位，如何评价他人——这些都令我感到新奇，即使那些只能展现出能够定义他们的一部分。从不同的人身上可以看到截然不同的思维与审美，即使某些作品看起来相似，但仍有较大差异。当创作者提出新颖想法时，我也会为其所震慑。这都是不同自我间碰撞所产生的某种火花，从而不仅塑造了“一百个我”，也塑造出“一百个她/他”。
一百个独立作品的创作过程与我平时创作的方式相仿：拍摄之后进行初次筛选，筛选出几张比较喜欢的，最后再挑选出最满意的一张。成品比例接近1:100。“一百”在中文语境中也有完美的意思，比如百里挑一。我时常会想，这种对于一百的执着，到底是来自自我的某种执念，还是来自他我的某种投射。这种筛选比例，也是在100个他我中寻找那个模糊但可能存在的自我，喻示着我们的成长过程，也是我们在世界上的某种游弋和定位。
“如何才能使这种机械的、无意识的过程产生对人类而言有意义的图片——具有清晰、连贯性和观点的图片？”约翰·萨考斯基 (John Szarkowski) 在《摄影师之眼》(The Photographer’s Eye) 中提出疑问。我选择以拼贴的方式对一百张照片进行重构，从而达到模糊个体特征的目的。选择以摄影书的方式对档案进行整理和最终呈现，是因为它能够比较直观地展示出我在相机屏幕上看到的画面。折叠起来的部分可以将创作过程隐藏在单张照片和文字之后，更加符合我的创作意图。
选择在此时创作这样的作品，是记录一个仍在变化中的自我，以及无数个、远超百人的他我，成为了此刻的某种镜像。如果”一切事物的存在，都是为了在一张照片中终结”，那么我希望我的人生终结在这一刻。
制作人员 / Credit
文字｜Author: 刘默霏 Mona Leau
编辑｜Editor: 王峥 Moham Wang
设计｜Designer: 苏岢 Su Ke
Statement
See oneself, see all-selves.
“A hundred me” is a series of collaborative works created by one hundred individuals, presented in two methods: photo-text artist book and collage. The projects were sorted by the date I first met the co-artists. Co-artists used me as their primary subject for photography, provide descriptions of their works and the “me” in their perception by text.
I believe that one must first develop self-awareness to break free from labels, and ultimately be able to empathize with others. Like what the Mirror Effect indicates in psychology, before attaining self-awareness, a human can hardly be considered as an independent individual with a soul, as one's behaviors are controlled by social relationships and external standards, although it is equally difficult to utterly separate this self from externality. After having obtained self-awareness, I often tried to see my invisible self from the world. In my early portrait works, the models seemed to lack personality. Compared to my earlier works where I projected myself onto others, I choose to confront the subject of myself in this work; or more accurately, I attempt to reconstruct the subject long submerged in details and distractions through posing as the object in others’ lenses.
In the early stage of the work, I aimed to transform myself into an object to be gazed at and commented on, using photography and video to question labels and reconstruct my identity. At that time, that "self" was in conflict with the external world. Ten thousand photos could not fully construct the “me”. Photography and archives are fragmentary, and photos can be deceitful to some degree; they cannot convey the entire truth. Even a large quantity of data cannot completely and thoroughly deconstruct an individual.
One’s “self” flows and constantly transforms within social relationships. Over the years, I have observed that I am easily shaped and reshaped by environments, showing different personalities in front of different people. Charles Cooley's "Looking Glass Self" theory, proposed in Human Nature and the Social Order, suggests that each person is a mirror reflecting others' evaluations of themselves, and self-awareness is gained through imagining how others perceive them. Similarly, Karl Marx wrote in his "Theses on Feuerbach" that "the human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In its reality, it is the ensemble of social relations." All these statements point to the critical relationship between oneself and other-selves.
In the latter stage of my work, I continued to see the shadows of others in myself. The "self" is no longer a singular self-existing polyhedron, but rather a mini-cosmos that encompasses everything and accepts all in one way or another.
In a sense, photography especially involving humans is an intimate act, yet I am not that intimate with many of my co-artists. Therefore, photography metaphorizes the situation where myself co-exists and adjusts to other selves, reflecting the complexity and sociality of oneself. The "me" in the photos was placed in different relationships: some people were meeting me for the first time in real life, most have not seen me for years, and a few had many entanglements with me in the past. I had no choice but to let those feelings and memories surface at different moments in my mind, which inevitably reflected in the state of my photography.
Unfortunately, not every individual of importance in my life could participate in this project due to limited slots. Due to the year-long duration of this project, my relationships with some of the co-artists have sustained, but some others have drifted apart. Susan Sontag wrote in "On Photography" that "To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power." In the process of making this work, I felt voyeur-ed and intruded. It is not only a coercion of thoughts and standards, but also my life being exposed to others, whether I want them to or not - including the parts I had not been aware of myself, like a mole behind my neck discovered during a shoot. This means photography places myself in a dynamic relationship to the world, in which process a new self is constantly altered and formed. “To photograph people is to violate them… it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.”, Susan Sontag also wrote. Being documented is the same as letting others judge oneself with words. They both lend others power over us. It seems as if I tacitly agreed to let them own a part of me and allowed them to enter a facet of my terrain.
During the process of creation, we explored different photographic forms and styles, such as snapshot, blank expression, staged photography, street photography, conceptual photography, experimental art, performance art, video stills, or shooting me together with their artworks. Some people were curious about everything about me, while others wanted to express themselves. I only helped beginners use the camera without influencing their decisions on composition, theme, concept, or final photo selection. All important decisions were made by them. Many developed an interest in photography after the art practice, but I remain open to the question of medium.
I tried to reflect on how the artists defined themselves through texts: what names they gave themselves, how they described their careers and positions, how they evaluated others - all of which intrigued me, even if these texts could only define them partially. One could see distinct logics and aesthetics in different people. Even if some works appeared similar, there were still significant differences. I was also struck by novel ideas proposed by our co-artists. These are all the sparks from the encounters between different selves, creating not only “One Hundred ‘Me,’” but also forming “One Hundred ‘Her/Him’”
The process of creating 100 independent projects was similar to what I often do: I select a few favorites after the initial photo shoot, and then pick the most satisfactory one. With a final selection ratio close to 1:100, I realize that the number "hundred" in Chinese also symbolizes perfection, like in the idiom “being the one in a hundred.” I often ponder whether this obsession with this number came from a self-oriented conviction or a projection from others. In addition, this ratio also means to find the self in one hundred other-s—blurry but possibly existent, symbolizing our growth, and our movement and position in the world.
"How could this mechanical and mindless process be made to produce pictures meaningful in human terms - pictures with clarity and coherence and a point of view?" John Szarkowski posed this question in The Photographer's Eye. I decided to reconstruct a hundred photos through collage in order to blur individual characteristics. Presenting the archive as a photo book allows for a direct display of what I see on the camera screen myself. Folded sections hide the artmaking process behind single photos and texts, which aligns with my creative intent.
Making such work at this moment is to document a self that is bound to change, and numerous other selves beyond the number of one hundred, becoming a mirror imprint of now. If "everything exists only to end in a photograph," then I hope my life ends at this moment—even for the artistic self, memento mori.
Writer: Mona Leau｜Editor: Moham Wang｜Design: Su Ke