Negative: Ephemeral Phenomena
translated from the chapter in “Above Flames” ：「負片：稍縱即逝的現象」
In the unconscious, nothing ever truly ends, nothing ever becomes the past or is forgotten…
— Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (Die Traumdeutung)
The writer lay bedridden, reading the newspaper, and by chance came across a review. The review mentioned that in Johannes Vermeer’s painting View of Delft, there was a small patch of yellow wall, painted so exquisitely that it could rival some rare Chinese paintings.
View of Delft is a particularly unique work by Vermeer. Among the nearly forty paintings he left behind, most depict indoor scenes, with figures often engrossed in mundane household tasks like playing musical instruments, writing letters, or pouring milk. However, this painting is one of Vermeer’s few landscapes.
The writer, despite his illness, decided to visit the museum and look once more at the painting he thought he already knew so well. Like a child chasing a yellow butterfly, he gazed intently at that small yellow wall. After returning home, his illness worsened, and on his deathbed, he said, “I should have written it that way… My last few books were too dull. I should have added more layers of color, made the language itself as precious as that small patch of yellow wall.”
That writer was Marcel Proust. I used to wonder why Proust would say, “My book is a painting,” or “My novel is a picture,” when clearly his novel is a river. Later, I understood. He was incredibly confident. He knew that his novel had come very close to that small patch of yellow wall in View of Delft. He knew that every fleeting detail he wrote down would leave an indelible impression on the world.
Paying attention to the details in photos, to the point that I often spend a long time looking at a single picture, is undoubtedly due to Stieglitz. During university, while searching for a cover photo for a class magazine with my classmates, we visited our photography teacher’s home to ask for one of his works. Frankly, the photos the teacher gave us at the time were disappointing. They seemed to depict something like sand art. Although the abstract imagery suited our needs, it wasn’t moving. The teacher’s living room was dim, and at the end of the hallway was a darkroom. The shelves were filled with photography books. Absentmindedly, I listened to my classmates chatting with the teacher while I flipped through the books. By chance, an image of a strange small town, either drizzled with rain or shrouded in thick fog, opened before me. The photographer had skillfully captured that sense of strangeness and the thin, desolate atmosphere. He raised the camera and pressed the shutter. Years later, I saw this photographer’s photography collection again in the library and learned that he was Stieglitz!
In 1881, Stieglitz moved with his family to Germany. The following year, he began studying mechanical engineering, and it was during this time that he was introduced to photography. With his interest in chemistry, he developed unique darkroom techniques, shortening the process of exposure and development to just thirty-seven minutes. Thirty-seven minutes may still seem long now, but one must remember that back then, photography and the newspaper or magazine industries were inseparable. When the time for developing an image was reduced from several hours to thirty-seven minutes, the “immediacy” of the image increased dramatically. The speed of image production gradually surpassed that of text production.
I still remember when I was in high school, it typically took two days to have a roll of film developed at a photo lab. Those two days were always nerve-wracking. The friends or family captured on that roll would often ask the photographer, “Are the photos developed yet?”
“Not yet.”
Then, they would quietly return to their lives, waiting. No one knew how the photos would turn out before they were developed — whether they were blurry or if someone had blinked. But the person taking the photos would have a vague impression because, in the moment the shutter was pressed, the image in the viewfinder would imprint itself temporarily in their mind. While eating, they would think, “How did that picture turn out?” While walking, they would wonder, “Did I capture the girl’s smile? Did I capture the tired look in that old man’s eyes? Did I capture the rain, the fog, the smoke, the clouds?” Even before going to sleep, they would still be thinking about it. But the memory would fade until, by the third day, when they had almost entirely forgotten, the photos would finally “be seen,” and time would return. The lost child would find that home was right in front of them.
What draws me to Stieglitz is that sense of time reappearing, the scent of something that passes and never returns. His photography style shifted several times, but I particularly like his later series called “Equivalents,” which consists entirely of abstract forms of the sky and clouds. Stieglitz believed these natural scenes were free — beauty that anyone could see — and all were “ephemeral phenomena.” When I look at these photos, I often wonder whether, when Stieglitz pressed the shutter, he already knew the shape of the raindrops, the direction of the wind, and how the snow, falling as hexagonal crystals, would manifest in the atmosphere of his photos. Were those images what he had anticipated?
In addition to those cloud and mist photographs, there is an early work by Stieglitz — a photo of a woman in what seems to be a corner of a domestic living room — that deeply fascinates me. In the image, a woman sits alone at a small round table facing a window. On the wall behind her are several photos, a birdcage, and three cards shaped like hearts. Among the photos on the wall is one of a man, along with two identical landscape photos. On the round table is a framed photograph, possibly of the woman herself, which also appears to be a repeat of one of the photos on the wall. At first glance, the patterns of the wallpaper and the tablecloth seem very similar, but upon closer inspection, the differences become apparent. The window is open inward, with the exterior shutters tilted at an angle, letting in striped beams of light. At that moment, the woman is writing something. I assume she is writing a letter because her expression suggests so.
This is a novel-like photograph. Stieglitz’s photos contain music; as you gaze at them, delicate musical phrases, like tulips swaying in the wind, seem to emerge. His images also evoke river-like emotions, much like Proust’s novels, filled with captivating little details. The light streaming in through the window, the woman writing a letter — this is so reminiscent of Vermeer’s depictions of daily life in his paintings. This comes as no surprise since, during his “Photo-Secession” period, Stieglitz was indeed pursuing painterly imagery.
The light in Vermeer’s paintings is often thought to have a beautiful “pearl-like” quality. It is said that this effect is the result of the painter carefully layering translucent paint, one layer after another. Some critics believe this closely resembles the subtle light effects produced by early cameras, which had limited ability to suppress glare.
Vermeer’s compositions are often quite consistent. The figures are placed in the center or slightly to the right, typically against a wall, with light entering diagonally from a window on the left. He favored painting women engaged in household activities, with a color palette dominated by yellow, blue, and gray. In an era when light was thought of as a particle, Vermeer, with unparalleled patience, recreated these particles of light and their carefully polished hues.
Vermeer had a lifelong friend — Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the inventor of the microscope. Although there is no direct evidence, researchers believe Vermeer learned many optical concepts from van Leeuwenhoek and applied them to his painting. Each of Vermeer’s interior scenes captures the moment light enters a darkened space, and View of Delft is the pinnacle of this light experiment. It might depict an afternoon scene, with water-laden clouds in the sky, blue sky sandwiched between the upper dark clouds and lower white clouds. The yellow wall that Proust, in his illness, fixated on might be located on either side of the Rotterdam Gate. It is said that the beauty of the light and shadow on those three small patches of yellow wall can only be fully appreciated when seeing the original painting in person.
Perhaps it’s a psychological effect, but I’ve always felt that View of Delft resembles a certain angle of Tamsui (淡水).
When I was in high school, Tamsui was still a distant place. At that time, Shilin still had a train station, and taking the train from Shilin to Tamsui, there would often be many schoolgirls getting on and off along the way. More than twenty years have passed, and I have completely forgotten what the scenery along the Beiyi Line looked like, but I still remember one or two of the girls getting on and off the train, or an elderly woman carrying freshly picked vegetables on a pole. Back then, I didn’t have a camera, so now when I recall it, it’s like the familiar smell of a roadside stall that only I can grasp — a fleeting clarity that is hard to describe. By the time I had my own camera, the Beitou-Tamsui line had been dismantled, and the details in my mind faded away, including the gaze of the girls in those remembered images, which blurred, said goodbye, and fell into sleep.
After taking a photography course in university, Tamsui became my most important source of material. I still remember the first assignment the teacher gave us, titled “The Suggestion of Three.” We had to take the photo and do the developing all by ourselves. He specifically emphasized that what we photographed wasn’t important; what he wanted was a photo with black-and-white gradation, a clear and non-blurry image, and he particularly instructed us to use a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second. 1/30th of a second is sometimes called the “dangerous shutter speed” — it’s the borderline for hand-holding a camera without it shaking.
Many of my classmates randomly found three classmates in the classroom or on campus, made three finger signs, or gathered three books or three pairs of shoes… and took the picture. I thought to myself, how silly that was. One day, I took the bus to Tamsui, constantly scanning the scenery for anything that might suggest “three.” I photographed three pawnshops on the same street, three trees by the riverbank, and three stones. Later, I sulked, thinking it was still just as foolish — except I had gone farther out.
That afternoon, I took a boat from the right bank to the left bank of the river. Next to the pier was a muddy wetland that stretched all the way to the river mouth. I walked cautiously across the mudflat with my camera, barely pressing the shutter because at the time, pressing the camera’s shutter meant spending about thirty to fifty NT dollars (this was a rough estimate of the cost of film, development, and ruined photo paper). For a poor student, one click equaled the cost of a meal. To this day, I can still smell the sea breeze from that day and remember constantly raising and lowering the camera, at one moment capturing a blurry scene in the viewfinder, and the next moment seeing it before my eyes. Finally, I took this photo: a fisherman by the riverbank adjusting his fishing line, another seemingly waiting for a fish to bite, and a little dog scratching itself. A moment in 1989, captured in 1/30th of a second on a winter’s day.
When I developed the film back at school, it was the worst-quality image. Not only was it out of focus, but it also lost focus again in the darkroom, and the black-and-white gradation wasn’t sufficient. By the teacher’s assignment standards, it was definitely a failing piece, but I still decided to submit it. Our assignments were submitted in class, and the teacher would mark circles, crosses, or triangles on our work forms — a circle meant passing, a cross meant failing, and a triangle meant passing with only a sixty. I got a cross, but deep down, I wasn’t bothered by it.
Years later, I still insist that this was a photo of utmost importance to me, an ephemeral phenomenon that would never come again. It was a moment I had anticipated ever since I first got a camera, just like when someone asked Paul Strand how he chose his subjects for photography. Strand replied that he didn’t choose them. “They chose me. For example, I’ve photographed windows and doors my whole life. Why? Because they captivate me. I don’t know why, they just have some human quality about them.”
That landscape in the photograph captivated me — and only the nineteen-year-old me. I never had the chance to encounter it again. After moving near Tamsui, I sometimes took my camera out, but apart from documenting birds and fiddler crabs, I rarely had the impulse to take photos. Standing on the sloped stairways, all I saw ahead were messy buildings and chaotic power lines, lacking beauty. Standing by the river, the cemented walkways stretched before me. The picturesque views of Tamsui depicted in Chen Cheng-po’s painting, where houses and houses “cooperated” to create a “painterly” view, had already crumbled and disappeared. Streets are not impermanent; they can change. But to one person, a street is usually more enduring than an ephemeral phenomenon. It is often a mosaic of collective memories, life, and creativity. Sometimes, a stranger entering an unfamiliar place can feel, in a very short time, whether a street is charming and worth respect. When such things, full of life, are replaced by something more superficial, it implies that the residents or those in charge of the decisions in that place have become more impatient. They no longer have the patience to wait for the beautiful image of their ideal street to take shape in their minds. They no longer have the patience to let their lives and the natural landscape around them become a complete picture.
In my lab, there is another photograph that carries the essence of “Ephemeral Phenomena,” one that I took during my military service at the Air Force Academy, next to Ergao Village in Mituo Township, Kaohsiung County. Back then, I often spent my half-day off wandering around the village with my camera. In Ergao Village, every alley had an archway wall, and between each archway was a public space with a sink that served both as a washing station and laundry area. The village was nearly deserted, and as I was walking around taking photos, I had the vague feeling that something was watching me from behind. When I turned around, I saw a cat sitting on the public laundry station — a cat that had not been there just moments ago. I barely adjusted the aperture or shutter speed, but instinctively raised my camera and pressed the shutter. At the very moment the camera clicked, the cat jumped off the laundry station and ran away.
This photo, to me, isn’t about the cat, or the laundry station, or even the death of an old military village. It’s about the light slanting in from the roof on the upper right, and the repeated yet non-repetitive image of the archway walls. The light carried a certain fleeting, ephemeral quality, a sense of narrative. It highlighted the details, illuminated them.
As early as 1897, before the formation of “Photo-Secession,” Stieglitz had already photographed clouds, but it wasn’t until 1922, when his brother-in-law asked him why he gave up playing the piano, that Stieglitz decided to respond with a series of photographs. He said the reason he wanted to photograph clouds was “to find out what I’ve learned in photography over the past forty years, and at the same time, to entrust my life’s deepest emotions to the clouds.” On the other hand, he wanted to prove that photography had a unique power, a power that didn’t necessarily need grand subjects to shine. He wanted to “prove that my photos are not dependent on their subject matter.”
Stieglitz described this project as “a great story of the sky, or a song.” At first, the clouds in his photos were still connected to the imagery of the earth. Viewers could clearly see that it was the sky and clouds above Lake George and the trees. But gradually, the clouds took on a life of their own, flowing like theme-less music, detached from the earth. Stieglitz named the first series “Music: A Sequence of Ten Cloud Photographs” and the second series “Songs of the Sky.” These photos proved that Stieglitz hadn’t truly given up playing the piano; he had simply started composing music with only his index finger, and that music required waiting for the light. Two years later, Stieglitz further separated the clouds from music, leading to his final series: “Equivalents.”
“I have a vision of life, and I try to find its equivalent in photographic form,” he explained. These cloud photographs were “the equivalents of my most profound life experiences.”
It’s said that someone once asked Stieglitz, not very kindly, “Hey, what is creative photography? What’s the use of it? How can you teach a machine to create?” He replied, “Whenever I feel a strong urge to take a photograph, I take my camera out. If I come across something that simultaneously stirs my emotions, spirit, and aesthetic sense, I will see a photo in my mind’s eye. I take the photo and show it to you — it’s the equivalent of what I saw and felt.” He said, “For me, taking photos is like making love.” Stieglitz reached a climax in every fleeting moment, capturing in that unconscious instant a photo — or a life — that would never become the past or be forgotten.
There are many ephemeral phenomena in nature — snow, fog, dew, the sunset just before it dips below the horizon. Sometimes these are such everyday images for us, yet at other times, they radiate a kind of unfamiliar beauty. For modern people, there are only rare moments when we treat them as part of our family. I think of the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi’s AILA series, which features the birth of animals and humans, sea turtles swimming in impossibly clear waters, crows begging for food, massive stones being sliced by machinery, and even simple images of dew, waterfalls, rainbows, and tree shadows. It’s as though the world’s most delicate and random elements come together to form images right before our eyes. But we know these images are not just random occurrences; they are intricately connected. Some critics have noted that AILA means “family” in Turkish, a name that makes these fleeting phenomena feel as if they are living together under the same roof. Everything that seems unrelated is connected, and this is the ecological explanation of imagery.
When you wander aimlessly down streets or forest paths, perhaps it’s a cat, a cloud, a window view, the start of the rainy season, or a woman who brushes past you and then quickly turns the corner. For a moment, like the striking of a match, you catch a glimpse of her profile, the ends of her hair falling onto her shoulder blades, the muscles in her calves, and suddenly, you are captivated, bewildered, sensing the smell of fire. In that instant, you feel the ground shift beneath you, the waves crashing. But she disappears immediately, and leaves you forever. In that brief moment, you seem to sense something — something cloud-like, almost within reach, that dissolves into mist and seeps into your body. You have to press the shutter. You must press the shutter. That photograph will be a feeling, a moment in time. And so, a part of your physical being is opened up, becoming a lake, a place where emotions can briefly reside.
The shutters we’ve pressed are as thin and fragile as printing paper left for decades. It is the stories we ask about or imagine behind the photos that give them structure. The photo preserves, lingers, and though it is powerless, it seems to hold back something fleeting, something that is slipping away.
