傅文俊 Fu Wenjun

城市记忆之于摄影，必须聚焦在实体上，其中最重要的对象，不外乎民居与工厂。傅文俊的创作，正是从这两个方面展开。作品给人的第一印象是银版效果，令人想起摄影史上的早期命名，尽管技术手段大不相同，画面造成的历史感和艺术家对记忆的执着乃是很沟通的。

For photography, urban memory must be anchored in the tangible, and among its most important subjects are vernacular dwellings and factories. Fu Wenjun’s creative practice unfolds precisely from these two dimensions. The first impression his works convey is reminiscent of a daguerreotype effect, evoking the early terminology of photographic history. Although the technical means are entirely different, the sense of history produced by the images and the artist’s persistent engagement with memory resonate closely with that early tradition.

《工业回忆》这组作品以黑白为主，仿佛是影像从记忆的黑暗中浮出。无论是机车还是铁轨，无论是车间还是厂房，全都笼罩在梦幻似的超现实氛围里。密集而精緻的线条，有如电脑建模图和蚀刻铜版画。这种后期处理，不仅强化了工业化对象的精确性，而且突现了我们捕捉记忆的精神状态：在形象消退时努力抓住细节的心理倾向。如果说《工业回忆》的线性特点偏于理性与冷峻的话，那另一组作品《城南纪事》的肌理表现则更多感性与热情。前者以深远的空间、高大的构筑和厚重的物件来留存工业文明的崇高感，而后者则以近逼、饱满的构图，丰富、跳跃的块面，来保持观察者的主体意识。其色彩的温暖，显然充满难以摆脱的情感性。艺术家以不同的技术处理和表现手法，细心区别故土乡情的眷恋和工业记忆的遗憾，其审美感受细致而精微，发人深省而又耐人寻味。

The Industrial Memories series is predominantly rendered in black and white, as if the images were emerging from the darkness of memory itself. Whether locomotives or railway tracks, workshops or factory buildings, everything is enveloped in a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere. The dense and refined linear structures resemble computer-generated models or etched copperplate prints. This mode of post-production not only reinforces the precision inherent in industrial subjects, but also foregrounds our psychological state when grasping at memory—the impulse to cling to detail as imagery begins to fade. If the linear qualities of Industrial Memories lean toward rationality and cool restraint, then the textural treatment in another series, Chronicles of the South of the City, conveys a greater sense of emotion and warmth. The former preserves the sublime aura of industrial civilization through deep spatial recession, towering structures, and weighty forms; the latter, by contrast, maintains the observer’s subjectivity through close-up, full compositions and richly varied, dynamic planes. The warmth of its color is clearly imbued with an inescapable emotional charge. Through differing technical processes and expressive strategies, the artist carefully distinguishes between nostalgic attachment to one’s homeland and the sense of loss embedded in industrial memory. His aesthetic sensibility is subtle and precise—provoking reflection while remaining richly resonant.

近些年来，由于中国经济的迅速发展，城市拆迁和工厂废弃已成为一种普遍现象。对历史记忆的挽留，成为许多摄影家趋之若鹜的题材。问题不在于你拍下了多少纪实性的老照片，作为一个艺术家，关键在于你如何通过独特的摄影观念——摄制方法、技术处理及展示手段，从集体认知的审美惯性中摆脱出来，把个体的、具体的、真实的感受加以呈现。从某种意义上讲，你只有从既成和既定的群体意识中退场，才能使个人的创造力突破惯性意识形态而真正出场。没有对意识形态操控的去蔽，审美自我的精神澄明是不可能在场的。当代艺术的创作活力来自面对问题的针对性和解决问题的方法论，傅文俊摄影作品通过纪实退隐的技术处理，努力形成自己重绘历史现场的艺术方法，其探索是富有成果也是富有启发性的。值得进一步思考的是，技术性的形式化处理仍然有一个如何对待审美惯性的问题。在此过程中，崇高与毁灭、美好与破坏的矛盾是不可避免的。我们生存在矛盾的真实和真实的矛盾之中，不能因形式美化的习惯势力和权力要求而放弃现实问题的针对性。因此，对艺术现场而言，傅文俊作品的“退场”不过是以退为进。

是为序
2009年1月2日
四川美术学院桃花山侧

In recent years, with the rapid development of China’s economy, urban demolition and the abandonment of factories have become widespread phenomena. The preservation of historical memory has thus turned into a subject eagerly pursued by many photographers. Yet the issue is not how many documentary images of the past one has captured. For an artist, the crucial question lies in how—through a distinctive photographic vision, including methods of shooting, technical processing, and modes of presentation—one can break free from the aesthetic inertia of collective perception and render personal, concrete, and authentic experience. In a certain sense, only by stepping away from established and predetermined forms of collective consciousness can individual creativity truly emerge, breaking through habitual ideologies. Without the unveiling and disengagement from ideological control, the spiritual clarity of the aesthetic self cannot be fully present. The creative vitality of contemporary art arises from the precision with which it confronts problems and the methodologies it employs to address them. Through a form of technical processing that causes documentary realism to recede, Fu Wenjun’s photographic works strive to develop an artistic method for redrawing historical scenes. This exploration is both productive and enlightening. What merits further reflection is how technical formalization continues to contend with the problem of aesthetic inertia. In this process, the tension between sublimity and destruction, beauty and ruin, is unavoidable. We exist within the reality of contradictions and the contradictions of reality itself, and we must not relinquish the critical engagement with real issues merely to satisfy the habitual forces of formal beautification or the demands of power. In this sense, within the artistic field, the “withdrawal” (retreat) in Fu Wenjun’s work is nothing other than an advance achieved through retreat.

Preface
January 2, 2009
Beside Taohua Mountain, Sichuan Fine Arts Institute