Unspoken

Nai Wen Hsu

Sold Out

Self-publish, Taiwan, 2017
Edition 365
ISBN 978-957-43-4642-4
Size 18x12cm

絕, if translated from Chinese to English, has various meanings – ‘absolute’, ‘matchless’, ‘dead-end’, and ‘no longer’ ; 句is also translatable to represent ‘language’, ‘line’, ‘dot’, and ‘period’. 絕句 = absolute language ≈ matchless dot ≈ dead-end language ≈ no longer period, etc.
After these two Chinese characters translated and recombined randomly, a spatiality is created by the possible produced meanings, and the multilayers in between is the target Nai Wen exploring in photography, in its silence.

'絕句' is also a name to an ancient Chinese poetry form, with its especial strict rules upon antithesis, syllable, and rhyme - 28 characters to complete a four-line poem while each line consists of 7 characters, all obeying the preset rule. Each character therefore exists only among the tenable of others’ existence and relies much on the talent of composing words to expression.

Imitating the expression and idiosyncrasies from ancient poets, the photographer fulfills 28 conditional vacancies by selected image among thousands as editing, and further puts the idea into printing and binding to complete ‘絕句’ as a small yet delicate photo booklet.

By composing a stream of consciousness and imagining the sounds and rhyme in images, Nai experiments a way to tell the story on her roving years oversea - perhaps that’s the reason visual symbols of water, boat, night station, night lights, and of mobility are frequently founded in the work.

絕句/Unspoken is the first photobook self-published by Nai Wen and with after all the experiment, it conveys also a meta-perspective upon her personal memories – landing to foreign countries, discovering the unknown, deconstructing the known, things happening on hearts and minds, learning and letting go, and finally to a re-departure again – a loop as the metaphor of life journey as to everyone. Through the tones of image, after re-collecting, fitting, and composing them, the four-line images also represent a sketch of a photographer’s poetic mind.

(The selected photos were made mostly in England and France, between 2014-2016)