Jia Chen Professor Karlic Vis167 Term Project Artist Statement June 8, 2016 A Life​· ​Alive Photography has become my passion in artistic expression since two years ago when I first touched a film camera. Observing, exploring, and analyzing society has also been another daily activity I like doing for at least a moment. When these two obsessions of mine started integrating simultaneously, I started to improve myself, identify myself, and find multiple facets of myself through this process. I used to make photograph about some “​decisive moment”​ from urbanity and from my daily life to call the audience attention on the tiny moment one would typically not take a few seconds to think about. ​In the other words, I use photography as my words to describe how the world looks like from my perspective. My term project of social engagement is a work on a sequence of “California life” through my personal perspective based on my exploration of how California is for me and for the local people. During the process of this project, I have gained a clearer idea on what California looks like, what is the California dream for the local people. These processes have also transformed my personal California dream. I titled my series of these photographs simply “​A Life​ · ​ Alive​ ”, which simply means the demonstration of how life in California is conscious and alive. However, my photography series is diversiform. To be specific, I decided using landscape, typical mundane or symbolic objects, representative human figures, and the abstract or detail on partial description to present what my understanding of “California life” is and how my understanding changes. My photography work is always a way for me to express how I feel and what I see. Therefore, every single photograph in this project is directly from my personal view and is the documentary on the subject matter I chose. As for the non-human figures photography, I am mainly focusing on using different composition to frame them to speak out on what I think and how I feel. Additionally, the different times of day (day time or night time) to shoot the subject, and the tone of the entire imagery is the way I express my subjective view on my project. Also, I always focus on making my photography to bring my audience a different new way to see and ponder about what they used to see. In order to achieve this result, I focused on subject matter choice, creative composition, and lighting of every frame. Furthermore, I put my whole sequence in a specific order on two different levels. Firstly, I ordered my project in a geographic order from the west coastline to inland California based on the locations of the photographs. Then I ordered the sequence based on the photographs’ diurnal variation. The geographic order of the photographs present how I changed my personal view, feeling, and my dream of California, but the diurnal variation is to diversify the project itself. As .

1. Jia Chen
Professor Karlic
Vis167 Term Project Artist Statement
June 8, 2016
A Life· Alive
Photography has become my passion in artistic expression since
two years ago
when I first touched a film camera. Observing, exploring, and
analyzing society has
also been another daily activity I like doing for at least a
moment. When these two
obsessions of mine started integrating simultaneously, I started
to improve myself,
identify myself, and find multiple facets of myself through this
process. I used to
make photograph about some “decisive moment” from urbanity
and from my daily
life to call the audience attention on the tiny moment one would
typically not take a
few seconds to think about. In the other words, I use
photography as my words to
describe how the world looks like from my perspective.
My term project of social engagement is a work on a sequence
of “California
life” through my personal perspective based on my exploration
of how California is
for me and for the local people. During the process of this
project, I have gained a
clearer idea on what California looks like, what is the California

2. dream for the local
people. These processes have also transformed my personal
California dream. I titled
my series of these photographs simply “A Life · Alive ”, which
simply means the
demonstration of how life in California is conscious and alive.
However, my
photography series is diversiform. To be specific, I decided
using landscape, typical
mundane or symbolic objects, representative human figures, and
the abstract or detail
on partial description to present what my understanding of
“California life” is and
how my understanding changes. My photography work is always
a way for me to
express how I feel and what I see. Therefore, every single
photograph in this project is
directly from my personal view and is the documentary on the
subject matter I chose.
As for the non-human figures photography, I am mainly
focusing on using different
composition to frame them to speak out on what I think and how
I feel. Additionally,
the different times of day (day time or night time) to shoot the
subject, and the tone of
the entire imagery is the way I express my subjective view on
my project.
Also, I always focus on making my photography to bring my
audience a different
new way to see and ponder about what they used to see. In order
to achieve this result,
I focused on subject matter choice, creative composition, and
lighting of every frame.
Furthermore, I put my whole sequence in a specific order on
two different levels.

3. Firstly, I ordered my project in a geographic order from the
west coastline to inland
California based on the locations of the photographs. Then I
ordered the sequence
based on the photographs’ diurnal variation. The geographic
order of the photographs
present how I changed my personal view, feeling, and my dream
of California, but the
diurnal variation is to diversify the project itself. As for the
sequence of my work, I
am looking for a progressive but also harmonious and gentle
rhythm. (which may
have break through moments in future work, but this is still
undecided). Therefore, I
have multiple aspect ratios of the frame in 3:2 horizontals,
vertical, and 1:1 square for
the presentation of different types of photographs. I didn’t do
human figures in
portrait aspect this time but in landscape, because I wanted to
make it contain more
information about the background in order to bring more
information and objectivity
in every piece of work.
In addition, in order to avoid extreme subjectivity, for exploring
the questions,
“how does the local neighborhood really think about
California”, and “how did I
change my California dream and feelings” in the process, I
conversed and interviewed
with the people I took photographs after took photos of them. In
the processing of
taking photos of these human figures, I first received their

4. permission, and then took
natural moments of them (they did not pose for camera). During
the interview, I asked
them questions such as “How do you feel California, U.S.A.?”,
“How do you feel
about your life and the place you are living at?”, “What do you
think about yourself in
this city or this area?” And then I transcribed their name and the
words they gave me,
and made a title based of their words on the back of that piece. I
did not put the quotes
part of their responses before the human figure photography not
only because it
follows my processing when I took the photograph, but also
because I want to make
my audience/viewer to see the imagery first in order to
contemplate more about the
imagery on their own, and then finally to see the text in order to
rethink. The text
captions in my sequence also led to a start of another chapter.
This photography experience not only helped me to shoot a few
nice photographs
from landscape and improve the strategy of selection and
presentation of the
photographs, but also built my idea on social context and
documentary photography.
My presentation style (the decision on combining photography
types) is most inspired
by the way Alec Soth worked on NIAGARA and Sleeping by
the Mississippi , which
integrates landscape photos (how outside people see the great
and beautiful
landscape), typical area, and people together. However, I put
my sequence together
based on my personal objective feeling and my own logic. The

5. documentary of Alec
Soth that we watched in class also encouraged me to knock on
strangers’ house door,
and talk with them. “If you want really know a place, get into it.
Don’t only get close
to it, but also be a part of it, and see it through your own
perspective” was what I told
myself throughout the process of this project. My goal was to
interview people more
so then just receiving permissions of taking photos, because the
Humans of New York
gave me such huge influences. By reading stories from HONY’s
website, I felt that
the conversations really helped construct engagement with
society, and the variety of
people’s options helped me as a photographer to understand the
society at a more
profound level
I am also trying to build my personal style through this
photography project.
However, as a student, the first part of the process is learning
and then creating. On
the single photograph style, I received influences from William
Eggleston, Thomas
Hoepker, Chris Killip, Chien-chi Chang, Stephen Shore, Doug
Rickard, Robert
Adams, and Lewis Baltz. By studying these photographers’
work, I tried to involve
more typical elements to make a portrait in landscape
composition. In particular, in
every photograph of Chien-chi Chang’s work Immigrants in
1900’s and ChinaTown , I
recognized typical elements besides the human reflection on
culture and the time
period. By this influence, when I explore to seek my object, I

6. was looking to see if the
environment of the human figure contains typical California or
American elements.
For example, in my work “Teenage Dream”(The 17 years old
boy standing behind the
fence with a “anti-war” wood piece hanging on the eave and a
basketball on the
grass), “Melt Summer” (an old gentleman in a beach style shirt
with an ice cream in
hand), and “Still Alive”(an old couple in the living room) all
have the typical
elements like sign, advertisement, daily supplies which show
they live in California or
some specific area in California. However, since I asked for the
permission to take
photos of them, I decided to spend time waiting for the right
natural light to make my
photograph more of a cinematic style than documentary style of
my portrait works.
When I studied about William Eggleston, I learned more about
how to distinguish the
vernacular scene or subject or even color in daily life, and make
the composition more
interesting. Learning about Lewis Baltz was helping me to
better flatten imagery on
visual. I also learned how to use the lighting in images to make
a new composition in
my project. Through studying Robert Adams and Alec Soth‘s
works, I started making
my first practice on landscape in this project. I also believe
Robert Frank has a huge
influence on my recent work since he is one of my favorite
photographers, but I think

7. his works influenced me incurably. Even my decision to explore
California through
my eyes, a foreigner’s eyes at the beginning of this project was
influenced by his
Americans .
As for making my work as organic as possible, I was inspired
by not only those
photographers’ works above, but also by my idea of sharing
information and multiple
cultures of other artists, such as music and painting like Edward
Hopper’s work.
Edward Hopper’s paintings were all about his personal vision of
modern American
life. After studying the concept and color usage of his painting,
I was really into his
choices on different people in different spaces at different
times. Like in the
Nighthawks and Summer Interior , I drew attention on the
following questions: “How
much information is contained in the painting?” “What kinds of
people are in this
situation?” and “How was the color affected by the time of
day?” The details and
overall color style in Hopper’s painting really influenced my
decisions of my work
like the Window and Lamp , even though some of those works
weren’t presented in the
project this time. As for the music, the American Pop music and
some music
describing California also led me to choose some specific
subject matters like the
typical California teenager. Since the music was based on my
imagination and my
California dream before I came aboard, I also decided to
involve them as a part in my

8. project. Thus there is one photograph of three music albums,
which contain the
typical and classic description of California.
This term project started with my research on how many modern
buildings and
how many abandoned places there are in California, which was
a project on the
compare and contrast of the city buildings and abandonment.
However, during the
practice and due to more studying, I changed it to be my recent
project. This project
will be a long term project, so I have not made it as a book yet.
Instead I will do more
practice, more research on it, and enjoy the progress of creating
this project.
(Other researches on “Strawberry field”, “Strawberry Festival”,
and “Salton Sea”
also helped me to decide include the photographs of these theme
in my series.
“Strawberry Festival” of this year is the 33rd in California
annual strawberry festival,
which showed a typical and traditional California features.
Also, the last chapter in
my recent series is the exploring of the abandon inland of
California -- Salton Sea
area which was the Utopia Planning placing in California once.
According to the Ted
Landphair introduced in The Incredible Saga of the Salton Sea
on Voice of America ,
“But dreams and schemes of paradise along the shores of the

9. Salton Sea, a tranquil,
buoyant, low-lying inland sea in the bleak and blistering desert
at the very bottom of
California, never came close to reality”, I decided exploring
that area to see how the
dreaming place is in California and how the people live there
now.
It’s a wonderful experience to have all the processes and
progress in this project.)
Reference and inspiration on my work resources from:
Leica Internet Team. "Leica & Magnum: Chien-Chi Chang:
Chinatown (New York
and Fuzhou, 1992-2011) - The Leica Camera Blog." The Leica
Camera Blog. N.p.,
04 May 2012. Web. 08 June 2016.
Landphair, Ted. "The Incredible Saga of the Salton Sea” Ted
Landphair's. Voice of
American, 05 June 2012. Web. 08 June 2016.
O'Hagan, Sean. "Alec Soth: America's Most Immaculate,
Intriguing Photographer."
The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 06 Oct. 2015. Web.
08 June 2016.

10. And other photography print in books studying such as
Prints from the "New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California"
portfolio, Baltz,
Lewis
Adams, Robert. The New West: Landscapes along the Colorado
Front Range.
Boulder: Colorado Associated UP, 2000. Print.
Adams, Robert. Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and
Reviews. New York:
Aperture, 1994. Print.
Karlic, Karolina Lectures, 2016 Spring UCSD.
http://alecsoth.com/photography/
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