YIZHUO DU

Inside the Power Temple

This title is much inspired by an album named Inside the Cable Temple, created by my hometown's most famous rock band. The "Power Temple" in my view is a metaphor for the modern home we live in. The duality of the term ‘power’ in the discourse of politics and energy seems to be a double reference to modern life: ideology, social media, oil, electricity... these cold words together make up the flesh and blood of the womb that nurtures us. Growing up in it, I always felt in a trance that I was born wrapped up in a religious fervour called modernisation, which taught me a pilgrimage of exaltation towards every product of modern civilisation.

Over the past few years, I have been constantly searching for these energy-related landscapes across the UK, Europe and China. These photographs never focus on specific people or sites, but they all suggest traces of modern human activities. In an abstract way, these activities and places are ceremonies and monuments for a religion called 'modernisation', and I am a pilgrim who comes to see them. Towards the end, I realised that the photographs seemed to constitute an apocalypse of modern life, which might serve as a comment in an age full of anxiety about the energy crisis, global warming and nuclear safety. I have compiled them into a book in the hope that archaeologists from the future will be able to learn from them about the home in which our generation lives.

这一项目很大程度上受启发于我家乡最著名的摇滚乐队的最后一张专辑：《Inside the Cable Temple》。

在我看来，“Power Temple” 是对我们所聚居现代家园的一种巧妙的比喻。“Power” 在政治和能源语境下的二义性似乎是对现代生活的双重暗示：意识形态，社交媒体，石油，电力，这些冰冷的词条一共构成了孕育我们的现代文明子宫的肉体和血液。我生长在其中，恍惚间总觉得我生来就被裹挟在一种名为现代化的宗教狂热中，教导着我对每一个现代文明的产物产生崇高感的朝圣心态。

在过去的几年中，我不断地在英国，欧洲和中国各地寻找这些与能源相关的景观中。这些照片从未专注于具体的人或者场域，但是他们无一不暗示了现代人类的活动痕迹。从一个抽象的角度来看，这些活动和场所仿佛是名为“现代化”的宗教仪式和纪念碑，而我则是一个前来瞻仰的朝圣者。当这一切接近尾声的时候，我发现似乎这些照片构成了一本对现代生活的启示录，这或许能作为我在一个能源危机，全球变暖和核能安全等话题引起广泛焦虑的当下所留下的一些论点。我正在试图将他们整理成一本书，期冀着来自未来的考古学家能从中了解到，我们这一代人所生活的家园。

See, Sea

I was born in Shijiazhuang, an inland city that relies on rail links. In most of my growing up memory, the element of "ocean" rarely appeared since it only meant exhausted travel, unbearable seasickness, and unaccustomed seafood to me. The ocean eventually became a symbol of "remote" and "exotic" in my consciousness which not only meant the strangeness in distance, but even the sense of curiosity with fear and a sense of alienation with vigilance. In the winter of 2020, when I was planning a road photography trip, I decided to challenge the theme of "sea", trying to find a symbolic or conceptual reflection of the concept of the sea in my self-identification.


From the winter of 2020 to the summer of 2021, I took several road photography on the coastline in the north of China, the islands in the east, and the delta in the south. Driving along the coastline, I photographed any objects, scenes or characters that could satisfy my fantasy of the ocean. The feeling of strangeness and alienation given by the sea was finally transformed into my visual choice of framing and distance. As the journey continued, the ocean had a more abstract effect on me — I began to feel more of my loneliness when I was chasing this grand concept. This kind of lonely emotion gradually dominates my creation. I try to record the scenery of the coast while integrating my inner emotions into the narrative of photography. This is the core of my ultimate hope which is to explore the concept and emotional connection between nature and identity.

我出生在石家庄，一个依赖铁路的内陆城市。在我成长的大部分记忆中，"大海 "这个元素很少出现，因为它对我来说只意味着疲惫的旅途、难以忍受的晕船和吃不惯的海鲜。在我的意识中，海洋最终成为了 "遥远 "和 "异域 "的象征，不仅意味着距离上的陌生，更意味着带着恐惧的好奇感和带着警惕的疏离感。2020 年冬，在计划一次公路摄影旅行时，我决定挑战 " 海 "这一主题，试图找到 " 海 "这一概念在我的意识里的象征物或某种反射。




从 2020 年冬天到 2021 年夏天，我在中国北部的海岸线、东部的岛屿和南部的三角洲进行了多次公路摄影。我沿着海岸线行驶，拍摄任何能够满足我对海洋幻想的物体、场景或人物。大海给人的陌生感和疏离感最终实体化为我在拍照时的对景别和距离的视觉选择。随着旅程的继续，海洋对我产生了更加抽象的影响 —— 在追逐这个宏大概念的过程中，我开始更多地感受到自己的孤独。这种孤独的情绪逐渐主导了我的创作。我试图在记录海岸风光的同时，将内心的情感嵌入摄影叙事中，这也是我最终希望探索的核心——自然与身份在概念和情感上的联结。

News Theater

In the summer of 2020, I was working as a camera assistant for a Chinese government-owned TV channel. My production team was responsible for local news production, interviews, and such. Like many government-owned news outlets, the news programs I participated in involved staging, intervention, and scripted performances. The boundary between news and theater is certainly very blurry, and I was drawn into the visual languages used in these productions. Every scene is created to be documented, and every line spoken is meant to be recorded. My camera, in this case, is my vehicle to swim in this mixture of truth and illusions.

After my internship with the official TV channel, I re-visited many scenes that I worked in, and reconstructed images in those scenes. In this process, I highlighted the visual symbols I found while disregarding other details. Behind this photographic experiment, I hoped to make the audience perceive the theme of the news by decoding the symbol text in the news without the existence of hosts. This involves the audience’s interpretation of the symbols placed on the stage. Through this experiment, I intend to invite the audience’s reflection on the symbolic roles of newsroom devices and settings – without the hosts, can the newsroom scene convey its original political signals? Does this habitual interpretation of symbols mean that the viewer has been subtly domesticated by the huge symbol system?

2020 年夏天，我在一家政府电视台担任摄像助理。我所在的制作团队负责本地新闻制作、采访等工作。和许多政府拥有的新闻机构一样，我参与的新闻节目涉及舞台、干预和剧本表演。新闻和戏剧之间的界限当然非常模糊，我被这些制作中使用的视觉语言所吸引。新闻里每一个场景都是为了被记录下来而设计，采访里每一句台词都是为了被记录下来而构思。在这种情况下，我的相机就是我在这种真实与虚幻交织的环境中畅游的载体。



在官方电视频道实习结束后，我重访了许多工作过的场景，并重建了这些场景中的影像。在这个过程中，我突出了我发现的视觉符号，而忽略了其他细节。在这个摄影实验的背后，我希望在没有主持人的情况下，通过解码新闻中的符号文本，让受众感知新闻的主题——这就需要观众对舞台上的符号进行解读。通过这个实验，我想邀请观众反思新闻现场的设备和场景的符号作用：没有主持人，新闻现场是否能传达其原有的政治信号？这种对符号的习惯性解读是否意味着我们已经被庞大的符号系统巧妙地驯化了？