Week 54: Mengxi Zhang

The rotating gallery features the work of an emerging photographer as well as an interview with him/her, and will change every Wednesday. The gallery is based off ‘collective curatorship’, where the photographer from week 1 chooses and interviews a photographer for week 2, week 2 chooses/interviews week 3, etc. There is only one stipulation to the process: Next weeks photographer has to be someone he/she has not had direct contact with yet. Ideally, this will take the gallery on a linked tour around the Internet, and exploring and unearthing new photographers as it goes.

This week, Kelley Smith interviews Mengxi Zhang.

Kelley Smith: Where do you live now? Do you go to school/work? What’s on your plate at the moment?

Mengxi Zhang: I live in London and doing a BA fine art course here. I’ve been taking photos, drawing and reading. Recently have plans to walk along the south coast of England. Just walking and not thinking about anything.

KS: Would you be taking photos, while walking around the coast with nothing on your mind? Or do you prefer to be more mentally or conceptually engaged while shooting?

MZ: When I go somewhere and think I’ll take some pictures there, seeing the place I have a general idea of what kind of pictures I want to take. When I’m walking there’s not much in my mind because of my sore legs (I’m usually too lazy to do any exercises). I’m more conceptually engaged before shooting and after shooting than while shooting. Before shooting I think about what I want to get from the shooting, especially when I’m doing something project based. After shooting when I’m looking at the pictures, I think about which pictures work and learn from them; if they fail then I think about what to do the next time. It’s more spontaneous in the actual action of shooting.

KS: When I look at your work, it gives me the feeling that I’m reliving exceptional moments from your everyday encounters. Do you think of it that way too?

MZ: I think they are artificial moments of my life. They are personal but not a documentary of my experience. I’m an observer when taking a photograph rather than being involved or living at that moment. They are more about the aesthetic and visual language that I want to create.  I’d like people to feel a sense of existence and emptiness when looking at my work. I’m interested in the imagery not what’s happening behind the pictures.

KS: By artificial moments, do you mean that you capture experiences in a way that may alter the way they actually existed?

MZ: I don’t think I capture experiences. When I’m taking a picture which looks happy doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m happy or not in that moment. Whether an experience exist or the way it exits doesn’t concern me so much with my pictures. Any picture could be related to a moment in life, whether it’s a real moment or artificial moment depends on how the viewer sees it. How I think about a picture is what it leads people to feel and perceive, it isn’t really related to my own experience.

KS: Do you have any influences you’d like to name?

MZ: Jim Jarmusch and Wim Wenders. I don’t see their work directly influence my photography. I just really like their stuffs.

KS: Maybe it’s just in a subconscious way. Do you ever work with video or filmmaking?

I tried but didn’t like it. Video and filmmaking need team work a lot. It’s just not my thing.

KS: I keep coming back to this image. Is there a story involved with it?

MZ: Hmm there isnt a story. It was just a night out with friends. And I thought that might be a nice pictures so I took it.

KS: What is your relationship with your camera - is it always by your side?

MZ: The camera I’m using at the moment is a Contax G2. It’s a cool looking camera so it’s always by my side like a fashion accessory. I don’t really take pictures all the time. I’m unproductive.

KS: So your camera is a multifunctional object, that is nice. You are working towards an arts degree, is photography your favorite medium? Do you think your training in drawing and other subjects influences/will influence your photos?

MZ: I like other media too. It’s just my brain works in the way of taking photographs. Each medium has it’s own limitation I think. If photography limits my ideas or photography isn’t suitable for my ideas then I’ll try another medium. Most of the time photography influences my other subjects. Even when I draw and paint, they are usually incorporated with the photographs taken by myself and found images.

KS: Do you see yourself photographing in the distant future?

MZ: Yes. Photography is what I’ll always do if I can afford film and processing and stuffs (I’m not good with digital photography).

KS: What do you think it is about digital that you aren’t good at?

MZ: I usually use very easy to use cameras and set things to automatic. Digital automatic setting just doesn’t work properly. I’m not technical at all.  And I have a thing with deleting everything in my computer constantly so using negatives is also a way of keeping my pictures, well, I also throw away negatives but not so often as deleting things.

KS: How do you feel about the ease of photography, then? Cameras today are generally made to be as easy to use as possible, requiring little to no skill. And photography is the is practiced in a huge majority by people who aren’t photographers.

MZ: It doesn’t really bother me. Like technically everyone can draw if they have a pen and paper. Camera is only a tool. It depends on how you use it.