shashasha

“The moment I push the shutter, the reality I see and the world that the photograph represents differ immensely. In my eyes, the world is a surging wave of visions, where every detail becomes a bubble bursting in a fleeting moment. How should I choose?”

Chinese photographer Jungang Zhang’s photobook “Trance State” features photographs taken during longer travels, journeys and camping trips, but they are neither roadtrip photographs nor any kind of documentation. Zhang’s fascination lies with details, both ordinary and unfamiliar. There’s the odd landscape shot mixed in with this series of close-ups and single-subject photographs but they too seem more concerned with a certain pattern or visual peculiarity that begins to form in the two-dimensional pane of the photograph. As if hypnotized, Zhang’s focus follows an insatiable obsession with the act of seeing, with the richness of visual singularities and details.

“To me, photography is a pure trance. I have no idea what I want, or what I am going to photograph. Nothing is resolved. Photography is a sequence of decisions with the least certainty, probing and delving until one photograph’s soliloquy is heard.”
― both quotes from Jungang Zhang’s afterword (all text included in Chinese and in English translation)