The main text I want to discuss is, instead of the exhibitions, the book The Chain, whose theme appears to be somewhere between chain and split, where
fantasy works. On the front cover of the book,36 we see the body of a person
35 The book won the Best Photography Book in the 60th Annual Pictures of the Year International (POYi) in 2003, and the third prize at the Gruppo Redattori Iconografici Nazionale (GRIN) Awards in 2004.
36 Chien-Chi Chang. The Chain. Book cover. Magnum Photos. <http://www.
Magnumphotos.com/c/htm> Path: Photographers; Chang Chien-Chi; The Chain.
with a chain on his/her waist; at the level of his/her legs, we read the title of the book “The Chain,” which tells that it is a book about “the chain,” which is not for animals, vehicles or machines, but for human beings. The chain connects to the back cover and the other side of it is worn on another person who is laughing. Thus, since the start of the book, we feel the tension of the chain.
The grey book cover contrasts the glossy black photographs, which are framed by white margins, that is, the clear cut boundary of the photographs.
They are intended to be viewed one page after another from left to right.
However, if we read reversely from right to left from the first page, we would find that all of the pages are black with one darker line across from the first page to the last one without stop or break. Thus, the book can have many pages as well as only one. The mental patients are chained two by two and to some extent in this book, they are chained all together with another darker chain in the back. The text “Letter of a Madman” is put after the photographs. The last page is stuffed into the back cover and it can be pulled out so that all of the photographs are “exhibited” in front of the readers. Each of the photographs has a break with another one by the white frame; however, in the back of them, it is still connected with the other
photographs by the dark line. Thus, all of the photographs can be read as a whole but each of them is unique. Further, every pair of the patients has their own relation and each patient has his or her own stories. They are unified as the mental patients in Long Fa Tang Temple but Chang finds out their distinctiveness.
In these photographs, some elements are repeated, some are varied. For instance, the black background, the rough floor, the bags in the far back, the chain and the frontal whole-length form of the photographs are the elements repeated. Different people with different clothes, shaved heads, and expressions are the elements varied continuously. The rhythm between repetition and variation activates the similar frontal portraits with variations:
it provides a sequence of photographs for us to read; it also forces us to read them as a whole.
As a sequence of frontal, whole-length portraits, each photograph is de-contextualized. It can hardly be recognized where the mental patients are situated in and who they are. The visual focus is concentrated on the figures since the background is dark and dim. Whether the subjects matter are male or female, they are shaved, dressed up in similar shabby clothes and they wear a chain with a lock on it, which chains them two by two in front of the
camera. Although we do not know what the camera means for them, they seem to be aware of its existence: there is someone who points the camera at them. Some stand still; their facial expressions vary (Fig. 3.1). Some appear not willing to be photographed: they do not look at the camera, they move when the photographs are taken, or parts of their bodies are out of the photographic frame since they move or do not stand exactly in the same position (Fig. 3.2 and Fig. 3.3). The whole-length portraits catch the power of the whole bodies, which show to the greatest extent how two people may be when they are chained together and how they may react towards a camera:
bewildered, performed, evasive, indifferent, earnest, resistant, provocative, and so on. It seems that in these photographs we feel all possible emotion and reaction when two people are chained and when they face the camera.
Although they appear as complete beings in the photographs, they are unified so that their individuality is dismissed because of the chains on their bodies.
Thus, Chang’s photographs not only catch the different relations between and among them but also show us their uniformity.
As a whole series of photographs, it is the theme of chain and split that we shall pay attention to. From this theme, the chain in these photographs seems to show that the relations among them are located somewhere between
break and connection, or, between chain and split. In other words, the relations between two patients, the relations between one and the rest of the group and the relation between the subjects and us are swayed between chain and split. It seems that the chain works in order to prevent the relations from split, or, that it is because the relations have split so that the chain exists to maintain or conceal the real situation. From Chang’s book we could tell that the interaction between chain and split may continuously be repeated and varied in different relations among individuals in the society. The frontal whole-length portraits let the details of the patients’ figures show up, which are hardly seen and rarely paid attentions to; further, because of the chain, they force the readers to think about what happens out of frame which Chang’s photographs do not represent. This comes from Chang’s intentional choice. The photographer does not shoot from a lower or higher angle but holds the camera at waist level as if the patients are standing right in the front, as if they are of the same status with us.37 He does not restrict their movement. He does not give up the unclear photographs. He provides them space to express partly freely in front of the camera. Since they are rarely seen or heard except in news reports, the photographs become the
37 In the exhibition, this series of photographs are presented life-sized (42 × 62 inches) with 15 degree angle of depression. It is much easier for the spectators to feel that they are staring at us (Chang, Fang-Wei 41).
space they can be present.