Many players will feel that there is something beyond the game itself at this moment, but it is difficult to describe it in any language.
The first time Lin Boshan had a strong urge to create photography through games was when he was playing “The Elder Scrolls 5”.
While walking through the boundless snow in Skyrim, he suddenly felt something. It was difficult for him to capture this feeling in a simple way, so he simply picked up the camera and took a few photos on the screen.
(Lin Boshan, “Untitled”, the material is taken from “The Elder Scrolls 5”)
This kind of behavior is a bit strange at first glance, but you will know how much netizens spare no effort when popularizing the screenshot function. But in Lin Boshan’s view, a simple screenshot cannot reflect his experience at that moment in “The Elder Scrolls 5”.
The artist’s imaginary province of the sky was rendered into a digital signal, turned into colored pixels and projected on the screen, passing through the dust and particles in the air to reflect on his retina. And the hazy errors caused by a series of color casts and scattering must be captured from the same perspective as the human eye.
“When I was visiting Skyrim, I forgot to fight, and was attracted by the snowy mountains and glaciers in the north, and fell into a small sand table. I tried to confuse the boundary between the game and reality, so I ignored the flying dragons and monsters, and only faced the screen when the picture fit the experience Pressing the shutter of the mirrorless camera pays tribute to a certain tradition of landscape photography, and the mere movement of pixels on the screen makes me feel as excited as I am walking through the snow.”
Limbershan’s latest work “Empire” series is based on “Hearts of Iron V” and “Victoria II”. The modeling of these two games is rough, and the screenshots are basically a battlefield map. However, in these grand strategy games where the lives and deaths of tens of millions of people are just a number, Lin Boshan uses zooming and collage methods to find out whether those puppet-like models have ever looked at the screen under the glory of war and historical decisions. moment outside.
(Limber Hill, “Empire”)
“I want to find human expressions and emotions from their faces—those who will die, those who are afraid of death, and I want to prove that NPCs, the moral projections of the player’s ego, can have some of their own ego. I always I thought, if only I could shake them awake.”
Deng Jieyu, who studied graphic design and photography in the UK, tried another way to bridge virtuality and reality.
Based on the “NPC” series of “Red Dead Redemption 2”, he printed out the game photography works, and then made these “photos” old. This process requires various attempts: sometimes, Deng Jieyu will soak paper and fabrics of different hardness and materials in coffee, then dry them according to the needs of old-fashioned, and then paste photos; sometimes, he will also use gravure printing First, the photographic work is printed on the iron plate, and then the ink is applied and transferred to the paper.
In the “Untitled” series, Deng Jieyu recycled many second-hand slides, and collaged the photos printed on sulfuric acid paper with the slides, making these game photography works look like old photos from a hundred years ago.
(Deng Jieyu, “NPC” and “Untitled”)
(Second-hand slides collected by Deng Jieyu)
Deng Jieyu tried game photography for the first time in “Fallout 4”. At the beginning, he took screenshots directly in the game, but these stereotyped images made him feel too boring like pictures on the Internet. During the second creation, he used the CE modifier to unlock the viewing angle restrictions in “Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice”, and brought his “viewing method” into the work when he created in reality, only to find his own language of expression.
(Deng Jieyu, “The Weiming City”)
Lin Boshan is the founder of the domestic art society HAKUCHI. In the beginning, HAKUCHI intended to be an “archive” of contemporary photography, introducing well-known or unknown contemporary photographers and their works.
But with the continuous evolution of the club in the past four years, HAKUCHI now wants to spread, talk and experiment. Along with these ideas, HAKUCHI has carried out more online and offline activities, and game photography is one of HAKUCHI’s most distinctive attempts.
This activity comes from Limber Mountain. I have two thoughts: Is there a difference in the perspective of different players in the same “public space”? Does the virtual world bring new landscapes and stories? In the past few years, Lin Boshan, Deng Jieyu and many like-minded friends have tried a series of different themes on game photography from the perspective of artistic photography with strong curiosity.
And their works were also selected and included in HAKUCHI’s “Exhibition of Game Photography Collection Results” series collection.
Yang Aili, “Lover” (from the game “Cyberpunk 2077”, the third phase of the results show)
Ma Zixiang, “/hud off” (from the game “Special Forces 2”, the results of the fourth issue)
Wu Jingwen, “Artificial Dust” (from the game “The Sims”, the results of the third issue)
Yan Xiangning, “Unreal” (from the second issue of the game “Assassin’s Creed: Origins”)
The mainstream big games have more or less a little bit of heroic romance. No matter how difficult the process is, the protagonists can always find a way to get a relatively happy ending. Many common game photography or game screenshots are also created around this emotion.
But outside of the spotlight of the main plot, the game can express much more than that. The interaction of the game often exceeds the design intention and tells more stories that belong only to the player. Like in Minecraft, a long, dark night cave adventure is exhausting, and the moment you return to the ground, the sun fills the entire screen and the background music plays. Many players will feel that there is something beyond the game itself at this moment, but it is difficult to describe it in any language.
And this is exactly the feeling that the artists of HAKUCHI want to capture.
We chatted with Lin Boshan and Deng Jieyu about their works. Limbershan joked that when he thought of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” as a sightseeing walking simulator game, it captured a completely different side of the protagonist’s journey. He lit up the entire forest with lighting, and all he saw were animal corpses one after another. Perhaps the protagonist who lived at that time would be calm about the death in front of him, but it is hard for players living in modern society in front of the screen not to be in awe and touched by this bitter cold world in the extreme north.
(Limber Hill, “Untitled”)
And what touched Deng Jieyu the most were those NPCs in the game who were limited by technology and seemed dull and stiff. Whether it’s “Radiation” or “Sekiro”, the NPCs in the game have a wonderful sense of alienation. They perform dialogues according to the plot in the game, but their stiff movements and expressions are out of touch with the world they live in, which reminds Deng Jieyu Some socially handicapped myself.
For Lin Boshan and Deng Jieyu, the core of their game photography creation lies in one point: to break through the existing perspective of the game designer, and give the picture in front of them a personal interpretation and reshaping. Whether their work is called photography or screenshots, there is no distinction between them. As long as the work expresses personal emotions and thoughts through the game screen, it is worthy of affirmation.
The history of game photography is actually not short. As early as 2006, the New York gallery Postmasters exhibited portrait photography works of Eva & Franco Matters in the game “Second Life”.
The Chinese artist Cao Fei also used “Second Life” as a medium to create a virtual image called “China Tracy” (China Tracy), and used the photography and recording of game characters and props to complete her artistic career Important works in: “I Mirror”
and “People’s Walled City”. At present, there are also new media artists like Lu Yang, who explore the subtle intersection between games and reality by combining elements of game design and virtual humans.
Cao Fei, “I Mirror” (picture from thepaper.cn)
Lu Yang, screenshot of “DOKU – Digital Alaya” (picture from luyang.asia)
Just as photography encountered many doubts about artistic value and creative techniques at the beginning of its birth, game photographers are also facing many questions about existence itself: What is the difference between this and a casual screenshot? Can taking pictures of models count as creation? The materials in the game are all created by other artists. Is this kind of collage considered an art form?
Both Lin Boshan and Deng Jieyu have thought deeply about these issues.
“Sometimes the process of game photography is like music sampling,” Deng Jieyu said, “Some of the audience’s doubts about our works are like the audience’s attitude towards rap music in the early years.” The sampling method widely used in rap music is to directly use ready-made The music materials, such as classic old songs, are broken up and reorganized as the “beat” of the rap background.
There’s been a lot of discussion about the business and moral aspects of this approach, and there’s good reason for both sides, but in general, society today tends to sanction this kind of appropriation of ready-mades. The sampling of rap music can be regarded as music creation, and the use of ready-made code libraries by programmers can be regarded as programming labor. Then the re-editing and creation of game materials can of course be regarded as a form of photography.
Photography in the real world is undoubtedly an action that requires a lot of physical labor. But taking pictures in the game is not easy. Just because the game itself is a precision-designed product, jumping out of its framework requires more creativity and technical assistance. Use programming and modifiers to change the perspective, and even directly unpack and use game materials for re-creation.
“Some types of photography, such as battlefield photography and wildlife photography, are relatively distant to ordinary photographers, but (game photography) can be more easily reproduced and paid tribute to that tradition through games, continuing intentionally or unintentionally. something.”
When Lin Boshan compared the traditional photography works with the game photography works received in the call for contributions, he realized that people will inevitably have some prejudices when looking at game photography. “Many landscapes in the real world are beautiful in themselves, but they are relatively fixed. Many people actually shoot the same things from the same angle. It is easy for people to agree with architectural photographers and landscape photographers in reality, but for game photographers. Creation has more doubts.”
(Top: Wildlife Photography by George Shiras III; Bottom: Mount Limber, Untitled)
(Top: Thomas Struth, “Church of the Holy Sepulchre, East Jerusalem”; Bottom: Dong Fulin, “Binary Landscape” from the game “Battlefield V”)
(Top: Luigi Ghirri, “Orbetello”; Bottom: Panda, “Journey to Wuzhishan”, from the game “Stanley’s Fables”)
(Top: Martin Parr, “The Louvre”; Bottom: Xie Rui, “Jerry, Jerry”, from the game “GTA5”)
HAKUCHI’s photographers, many creative techniques are pioneering from the perspective of game photography, but from the perspective of photography art, there are no precedents to be found. As the most “subversive” member of the Düsseldorf School of Photography, German photographer Thomas
A series of works released by Ruff is called “Jpegs”, which directly uses ready-made news photos and enlarges them to the scale where pixel blocks can be seen, giving an image a new connotation. Lin Boshan’s “Empire” can be said to be of the same origin in terms of creative techniques.
(Top: Wolfgang Tillmans, “Concorde”; Center: Limber Hill, “Empire”; Bottom: Thomas Ruff, “Jpegs”)
Deng Jieyu’s recent works focus on the NPC in “Cyberpunk 2077”. During the long development process of the game, these characters have background stories carefully created by designers, carefully designed clothing and dresses that match their identities and personalities, and various hidden information fragments to describe their lives.
Except for the short few seconds of interacting with the player, most of the time these NPCs only exist quietly as the background board of the game. But when Deng Jieyu’s camera was aimed at them, it seemed to capture countless stories waiting to be told.
(Deng Jieyu, “NPC”)
These works are easily reminiscent of the famous Magnum photographer Alec Soth. Alec Soth’s photographic objects are often full of a “real NPC” feeling. Love letters are a classic subject of his photographs, and people seem willing to share these deeply tender and intimate personal memories with him.
“If there’s a nice apartment here, and I have a decent job, and you’re happy and feel like maybe we can have a (nice) story, would you go home?”
(Alec Soth, Love Letter: Would You Come Home?)
These letters are like the diaries, letters, and group photos scattered by the NPCs in the game who have no way to speak. A few fragments piece together an ordinary but unique life.
(Top: Alec Soth, “Sleeping By The Mississippi”; Bottom: Deng Jieyu, “Untitled”)
Although game photography is controversial in one way or another, it is undeniable that game photography has become an indispensable part of games, and the full-featured photography mode has even become an important selling point of many games. Ordinary players are also willing to use photography Share their experience in the game on social media in the form of screenshots.
(A beautiful picture of the author and his friends opening up wasteland on the island)
HAKUCHI’s call for game photography is now in its fourth year. The initial call for papers was just a simple discussion on the virtual public space: what kind of perspectives will different players use to view the same landscape? But as the event continued, people gradually discovered that this call for contributions touched on the most controversial part of game photography: the almost ambiguous distance between the game and reality, the empathy or opposition between the player and the character, and the This itself is a controversial form, trying to question the boundaries of photography as an art form.
Although the artistry of game photography is often questioned, the creators of HAKUCHI have unexpectedly inherited the most fascinating form and will of photography.
Outside of games, the discussion of game photography has gradually moved into a more professional field. The Photographers’ Gallery in London, England, started in 2020 with a project called
Screen Walks series of lectures and workshops on photography in online spaces, among which there are many pioneer discussions.
In addition to the guidance of professional artists on “how to take screenshots cleverly”, there are even artists who have created an NPC photographer Bot roaming in “GTA5”. Through programming means, this Bot refused to participate in the tasks in the game, and took out his mobile phone to take street photos when something happened, and never took up a weapon.
(Screenshot from webinar “Screen Walk wit GTA V Photographer Bot”)
After a while, the voices that game photography is not “real” enough and “material selection is limited” will become weak echoes from ancient times. Just like people once questioned whether photography itself is “real”. As early as 1974,
Hiroshi Sugimoto came to the New York Museum of Natural History to photograph the microscopic models in the museum and published the photobook “Diorama”. These series of works are like game photography, drifting between reality and virtuality, elusive, but Hiroshi Sugimoto believes: “When the virtual images are captured by the camera, they become real images.”
Because it is not the physical criterion that ultimately determines whether a work is “real”, but whether the audience can be touched by the picture when they look at the work, and finally see what the author wants to present, the human nature outside the picture and thinking.
(Hiroshi Sugimoto, “Diorama”)
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