Yuhan Zheng

Reality Stage

Photography is the alternative reality relative to the physical world.

“My project Reality Stage was inspired by Michael Wolf’s series Street View which provokes the viewers to reconsider the definition of photojournalism in the context of the information age. The images in Wolf’s series were rephotographed from Google Street View. They neither have a clear orientation of the identity of the individuals nor a strong narrative. The context of each photograph is ambiguous. The traditional sense of authenticity of photojournalism is questionable here. Wolf’s series raises a question about how reality and fiction are blending in nowadays influenced by increasing interaction with technology, further interrogating the definition of reality itself.For my project, I extracted the images from ordinary clips recorded by a home camera and named for those spontaneous moments. Even though 99% of the time I didn’t aware of the camera watching me, I did not see the clips as the reproduction of reality. The images are still, and they are on the surface of the material of reality, so they are easily named or categorized, but the perception of experiencing the material is constantly changing. I see photographs as the extended time, perception, and consciousness that we indirectly experience the material of reality. Also, those photographs reflect the alienation of the self. The camera physically recorded my everyday life, but the representation is like a movie. I and my boyfriend are the characters in the reality movie, and we perform the roles in this home space.”