SOHIE

 

 

 

 

I went to Tian’an Men with the belief that I would find traces of its loaded past. Instead I arrived on a square, which with its vastness lost all expression of emotion, space or time; an endless plane of nothingness. There appeared no sense of historic consciousness.

It took me by surprise, when suddenly the long exposure level of the photographs made me see them; Forgone generations shined through in the foreground as voices and scribbles of light, being washed away by the eroding seas of time.

 

 

Giant floodlights were positioned along Tian’an Men to illuminate the spectacle of the People’s Red Forces.  Today they accentuate an all-pervading sense of uncertain transition.  Their sentinel light transforms the square into a shadowy wonderland inhabited by colourful creatures at play.  Would they have recognised the same feeling of “otherness” as I felt while wading through their colourful masses? Or is it just perfectly natural to pose in front of the Leader and smile into the camera?

 

 

Blue skies no longer exist.  A brown silver haze merges past and future into a mysterious skyline and softens the wounds of an old world.  At night it gives the streets a gentle apocalyptic glow. The whispering shadows of construction-workers dance in the blinding light of the new ruins. Vibrant shop windows bring cheap comfort and reassurance as they pour their intoxicating magic into the ancient guts of Beijing. The once forbidden city knows in silence.

 

Only through photographs can I remember their faces; the kite man, the soldiers, the butterfly girl. As if my focus rested upon them, that was taken over by an invisible, pounding rhythm.  It absorbs their features into a collective presence and impermeable memory. Forever moving, oddly passive though exuding power of epic dimensions; the flow is relentless like the bright orange lemonade sold by the Master Puppeteer.

 

 

 

Caroline Sohie

Tian’an Men, 1 October 2006.