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Lang Jingshan 郎靜山
Shelter in Forest 獨宿學幽棲
1950s
Lang Jingshan’s prolific output and pioneering explorations using composite photography earned him the name ‘father of Asian photography’. He is known for the poetic and painterly worlds he created, as well as for his innovative darkroom manipulations. Shelter in the Forest (also titled A Reclusive Life) blurs the margins between photography and painting. It is a photogram, an image printed on photographic paper without the aid of a camera. In this alternative manipulation, objects are placed on unexposed photographic paper and leave an inverse when the paper is exposed to light. The resulting image resembles an intaglio or a woodblock print.
Shelter in the Forest was executed while Lang was living in Taiwan. His lyrical scene of solitary life in nature is outlined in elegant, thin lines and captures pictorial depth and mood in a succinct composition. The four-post shelter in the style of Ni Zan is a trope in Chinese literati paintings that originated in the fourteenth century, and waterside birds are typical companions of the hermit recluse. The seal in the bottom left is a formal nod to the genre of literati painting and, following this tradition, the work likely contains autobiographical sentiments.
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