b h a g . n e t   visual and conceptual exchange   b h a g . n e t

  
bhag cover page         bhag interviews         Alan Chin interviews

conducted by John Clay

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CLAY: I believe there is an idea from the postmodernist writer Roland Barthes that influenced your philosophy of photography, but in a reverse way?

CHIN: The idea that a photograph can really be a bad thing because it replaces the memory. If you take pictures of your mother, and then your mother dies and you don't see her for twenty years, then all you really remember is the photograph. That's what Barthes says. I'm not so sure about that. I think the photograph serves as a trigger for memory. Memories aren't reliable, after all, so at least photographs put a concrete shape around it, just as a diary would. In a technological society like ours, change is rapid. We do very different things from what our fathers did and what their fathers did. And photography is one of the few ways we have to hang on to the past. People have been writing PhD's about nostalgia and its force in culture. It's a fairly new experience for human beings to go through what we go through, the pace of change. So how do you respond to it? I think photography, memory, nostalgia—these are ways of responding to it. Some people collect postage stamps, or currency, or dolls. This has become a culture of collectors. It's all part of the same impulse, to try and keep what you know is rapidly being lost.

CLAY: And that's what your project of photographing your family was about?

CHIN: Yeah, very much. And the Chinese community. The story of the Chinese in America has changed enormously—from poor people who were almost illiterate to, these days, highly educated people coming over. In China's case, it's a question of people from one big country coming to another big country. China is much bigger than the US by population. In my case, we come from a tiny village. There are not that many of us. And these are the people I kind of know, the Taishan. That's very special to me. I wasn't even born there, I was born in New York. But that's where my people are from.

There were never more than fifty or sixty thousand Chinese in America before 1960, and most of those were Taishan. Now the population is several million Chinese Americans, and there are probably still a large number from Taishan. But it's no longer the whole community.

CLAY: Do you notice a difference between those with Taishan roots and those with other Chinese roots?

CHIN: Yes, I think so. It's like Mississippians will know exactly who is from where in Mississippi. The same with us. People will say "Chinese Americans" or "Chinese people", but within that there are so many smaller groupings, each one with its own story, each one with its own unique past. So I am interested really only in that tiny, provincial, incredibly small thing in terms of Chinese heritage. It is social class and dialect and cuisine. More recent immigrants are from different regions or different social classes. For immigrants there was always this sense of America being a land of promise, and they came, and for some the promises paid off. In that whole process the character changes, people become more American, they have more money, they become more part of the greater society. It's no longer a ghetto.

CLAY: So there's a sense of Taishan American culture being lost?

CHIN: Right. And you know, no one wants to preserve that. I don't want to preserve it. I want to record it, but I wouldn't want to keep it as it was—a society where you can't have sex outside of marriage, where you are socially ostracized if you do this or that; you know, a primitive, conservative, peasant culture. I mean, once it's gone, it's gone.

CLAY: People seem to get mixed up between those two, recording versus preserving. Some people seem to just want to preserve societies, as if to say: Stay how you are, so we can we marvel at your exotic way of life.

CHIN: I think that's mostly outsiders looking in. I think if you are from the place you are going to be, at least, quite ambivalent. Some things are lost and other things are gained.

CLAY: Why do some Chinese-Americans call white Americans just "Americans" but call themselves "Chinese-Americans"? Why not hyphenate everyone or no one?

CHIN: It's a natural thing. If you are the only one who is Chinese in a school or community where most people are not, and they make fun of you or they look at you strangely, or there is a certain social distance, you might feel a bit ashamed, a bit of outsiderness. And you want to join the club. That's the whole thing. Chinese-Americans that I know of want to be accepted. That's why intermarriage is so high. I'm an American. I don't like those hyphens, and I really don't like the Asian-American hyphen. What do I have in common with Vietnamese? I think it's just an easy way of creating identity when your identity is uncertain or oppressed. So you say: Fuck it, we are gonna be Asian-Americans because people look at us funny. Actually, people do this abroad all the time. I don't have anything in common with somebody from Milwaukee, but if I'm stuck in the house for a week in the middle of Iraq with someone from Milwaukee, I'll talk to that guy, and we'll start identifying with each other because we are the only ones who are even remotely similar in this otherwise alien place. The same with this whole Asian-American thing. Because there are comparatively few Asians in America, maybe we do need to say: Hey, we've got to at least form some temporary alliances to deal with the greater issues of discrimination or racism. Well and good. Practically speaking, it's fine. But on a personal level, I don't buy any of it. I am American. But to be American is to be Something-dash-American. Even Native Americans are Native-dash-Americans. I think this remains a land of great opportunity and people who are lucky and privileged and hardworking enough to get somewhere will do so, regardless of ethnicity or religion. And I think to that degree the American dream remains true.

CLAY: How do you decide how far to go in hyphenating your identity? Are you Chinese-American or are you Taishan-American?

CHIN: I'm none of the above. I'm an American who happens to have all this as my specific particulars. I think if we are going to live in a republic that is diverse, then we all have to accept that, we all have to agree that our ethnic and religious particulars are different and that's just something we have to negotiate about.

CLAY: Many Americans can't seem to see past the particulars to recognize their shared Americanness. What in your background or upbringing helped open you to this sense of shared American identity?

CHIN: Every institution I've participated in was integrated. I went to school where there were Chinese kids and non-Chinese kids. Some institutions are not integrated. Churches, by and large, are not. They tend to be mono-ethnic. But if you are sick and go to the hospital, that is a multi-ethnic place. School is multi-ethnic, your job is probably going to be multi-ethnic to one degree or another if you work for a larger corporation. We live in a country that, by definition, is integrated, and we live in a city (New York) that is particularly so. So there is no way out of it. Everything I've ever participated in is integrated. So I have to believe in it, because what other choice is there?

CLAY: What should the rest of the city know about Chinatown?

CHIN: It's not just a place to eat. It is actually a really interesting place architecturally, historically. It's a great place for a lot of things. There are a lot of cultural things, there is a lot of commerce other than just food, it is close to all the other parts of downtown, it is very central. In one sense I wish it were more hip and had more cache and that people would come here more and integrate it into their regular life. On the other hand I don't want that because that would drive prices up. There's a balance. I think all too often New Yorkers, partly because of the fact that we are all so mixed in together, do still have huge barriers. Hipsters who don't consider themselves to have an ounce of racism will nonetheless never go to the Bronx for any reason. They will also never go to "Archie Bunker" white neighborhoods in Queens for any reason. That's as ridiculous as being racist against blacks or Chinese or whoever. At the same time, we can't all be super Democrats, super egalitarians. Obviously you are going to prefer some things more than others.

CLAY: Where do people hang out in Chinatown?

CHIN: Traditionally we don't have a lot of nightlife, but look—we are sitting in one of these places. This is an example of gentrification right here. This is a bar owned by a Swedish couple, and it used to be a Chinese barbershop.

CLAY: Are there any Chinese places in Chinatown that could be drawing people from other parts of the city.?

CHIN: Yes, there is a whole crop of these new cafes that have a very young, mostly Chinese crowd. But you have to remember, Chinese culture historically is not a heavy drinking culture. We drink for celebrations and socially, but we don't have a tavern culture. Also, we used to have movie theaters, but they all died. Chinese people would come to those, and towards the end, when the Hong Kong movies started getting popular, you would see the occasional film student. But Chinese people don't go to the movie theater to watch movies any more. Video tapes and satellite TV channels killed them.

CLAY: When you were a twenty-something, where did you hang out in Chinatown?

CHIN: I didn't hang out in Chinatown much, and I still don't in the evening. Like I said, it doesn't have the same sense of nightlife.

CLAY: Then where do Chinese people congregate in the evenings? They don't all go to bed at 6pm, right?

CHIN: No, but you have to realize that fewer and fewer people live in Chinatown now. Chinatown is more and more a place you come on the weekend to go shopping. It's a downtown. Many of the garment factories that used to supply the day workers that would go out to lunch, for example, don't exist anymore. Those got turned into SoHo lofts. Now it's retail commerce and gentrification.

CLAY: Who has influenced your photography?

CHIN: There is a Swiss photographer, Robert Frank, who I really admire. He did a book called The Americans, in 1957 or 1958, to which Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction. Frank has a very nuanced, individual view of things. He was basically wandering around the country taking pictures of non-events, non-situations. But it was a really detailed, wonderfully poetic, wonderfully moving book, and that influenced me a great deal. In terms of war photography there are a couple of famous guys: Robert Kappa and Larry Burroughs really set a certain standard. Or contemporary people like Gilles Peress. Burroughs is one of the quintessential war photographers. He covered Vietnam throughout the 1960s and was killed in Cambodia. He set a standard of being intensely close, and yet at the same time making these very well-formed photographs where every element of the story aesthetically fits. And Gilles made it ok to shoot at an off angle, to have a hand coming in from the side, to have seemingly random, uncontrolled elements in the photograph that contribute to it. Historically people would look at a picture like that and say it's really bad—This is out of focus! or Who's this guy in the foreground?—but those things actually add layers to it. Now it's just another form of photography, as opposed to constructed photography. Constructed photography being anything where people pose or it is set up in advance. A press conference is constructed photography, because the only reason they are there is to speak to the press. Everything else: If it's real, that's what's most important, if it's real.

CLAY: What do you look for in a photo?

CHIN: You have thirty-six pictures on a roll of film and, if you are lucky, one of them will work. If you are lucky. That's why photographers shoot thousands and thousands of pictures, and they'll be remembered for one or two of them. There are basic—not rules—but guidelines of aesthetics. And I think if you really distill them, they are even mathematical. That a ratio of a triangle like this will work but one like that will not. We live with a whole history of art, paintings, photographs, sculpture, books, descriptions of imagery. So it's all in here. You can't be a somewhat educated person and not knowall this, instinctively and also through your education. But it's also very subjective. In some ways to be a good photographer is to be a good visual artist to other visual artists, because those are the only people who have seen enough that they understand what you are trying to do. One does need a certain level of visual sophistication—which this culture by and large is lacking. Even though we are inundated with images, most people don't really know how to see. They look at magazines or billboards or the television, and they take it all for granted. Even in high school people are taught how to do basic analysis of a paragraph, a sentence, or a short story. But they are not taught that with painting or photography or sculpture.

CLAY: If photojournalism is about telling a story, then why does it matter if a photograph is beautiful or not?

CHIN: Because if it's not beautiful, no one wants to look at it. Because there is a certain aesthetic bar. You could tell the story of the Odyssey, but if you told it in words that simply did not string together, no one would read it. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet—you could tell that story a million ways. But one reason Shakespeare remains relevant after five hundred years is the poetry of the language, the beauty of the language, which is why we still keep going back to it. That's true for images too. If a photograph doesn't have some aesthetic level, then why should we bother looking at it? There is so much else to look at. You need to capture the viewer's attention. It also needs to work on more than one level. If you were someone who needed to tell the story of electricity in Lower Manhattan and why it was important, and you wanted people to read it who otherwise wouldn't know about it, you wouldn't write it as a technical report. You would write it with anecdotes and with history.

CLAY: In our image-oriented society, why don't people learn how to read images?

CHIN: People are not taught this [visual skill] because, I think, until very recently it was taken for granted. And it has also been in everyone's best interest not to look at it too closely. If you are at an ad agency and you want to sell a product with a photograph, you don't really want people to analyze that photograph too much. You just want people to look at it and say: Yes, I'm going to buy a Toyota. Also images, photographs especially, have a very personal dynamic. Everyone photographs snapshots—their family, where they went on holiday, that sort of thing—and there is a very low aesthetic bar for that. As long as it's a picture of your mother, and you recognize her, that's it. Because it's so democratic, there's a sense that anyone trying to do more with it either is very pretentious or some kind of genius, or they are just nuts.

I think the arts in America have always been denigrated. People make fun about pottery class or art class, like it's for children or people who are not serious enough. Photojournalism is one of the ways that you can bridge this, when it's done well, because you can be quite serious. To be a photojournalist—which is a term I hate, by the way—is to have a foot in more than one camp. On the one hand you are supposed to be a visual artist who is comfortable with high art concepts. But on the other hand there is more of a social sciences side, and you have to be interested in nuts and bolts, statistics, how many people are killed, why are the communists behaving this way and the capitalists the other way.

CLAY: What term do you prefer instead of photojournalist?

CHIN: There isn't really one. Photographer is really general. I don't like photojournailst because it doesn't give enough to the art side, because it's too much social sciences. But I don't think there's anyone who really likes the word for what they do.

© 2003 John Clay