About the folio:

This is the second folio I come up with after the photo study tour to Europe in 2017. Together with around 30 RMIT students, Bronek and Shane, we visited Berlin, Kassel, Paris and Arles for museums, galleries and exhibitions. The trip took about two weeks. 

According to Victor Burgin, one of the purposes of photography is to record. So, I will take on a documentary approach for this photo essay. Inspired by Ian Boost’s Object Oriented Ontology, I will focus on the trip and treat the trip to Europe as a thing in itself instead of an experience for me, by taking photos of many things during the trip whether or not the subject interests me or not.

Aim:

To reveal the rich variety of the trip to Europe, mainly, the spectacles of the four cities.

Background:

I was inspired by Ian Bogost after reading his book: “Alien Phenomenology”. His Object Oriented Ontology puts things and human at the same level as “humanity has sat at the centre of philosophical thing for too long”(on the back page of the book). Therefore, I propose to make a selection of photos not only about my impression of the trip. The “I” is a part of the trip, but “I” am not at the centre. In this project, “I” only act as a recorder to help to reveal the many aspects of this trip. Another inspiration comes from Jonathan Harris, who has been experimenting new ways in human storytelling. His method has been most interesting in his large amount of photo sampling. This is one of his work: http://thewhalehunt.org/.

Methodology:

The whole standard procedure works like this: I will take photos of mamy subject matters during the trip: people, streets, signs, sky…whether they interest me or not. After that, I will delete the overexposed photos and the too blurry ones. The remaining photos are to be numbered and selected randomly using a number randomizer. My aim is to create 10 groups of photos and put them together into 10 photos. Each group will contain 9 photos. The reason that I choose nine is simply because I need a standard look and as many but not too many photos in a group. The last group in the selection will be chosen by myself as a comparison to the other 9 groups. I wish to make a photo essay that best tells anyone about this trip. The finished works will be displayed in an online blog with words accompanied. The website: http://www.mediafactory.org.au/jialu-cheng/

Moments When I picked the photos:

                             

Data:

  1. Randomly choose 81 from 1067 photos.
  2. Choose 9 from 1067 photos.
  3. The aim is not the quality. The aim is to stay truthful.
  4. Please note that some captions are not in complete sentences.
  5. The numbers: