我们很高兴能利用姜健这个很少人知道的作品来迎接农历虎年：即由法国文化部特别委托拍摄而收藏的“纱阁戏人”——中国戏剧纸偶系列。

　　这组是姜健个人最喜爱的照片，因其摄影师-音乐家的双重身份(他毕业于沈阳音乐学院)，而他的摄影生涯始于河南省歌舞团的剧照摄影师。“纱阁”是指山西一带放置于漆木盒中的戏剧场景，“戏人”是由一百年前有名的纸工匠许师傅所制作的纸偶，而这一技艺现已失传。姜健的照片已经成为这28出小戏的唯一的“正宗”的影像记录。这些纸偶年代久远而易碎，由于不易保存，也无何维修的方法，它们可能很快就将化成灰烬。

　　该组摄影作品的独特性不仅来自这些“纱阁”纸偶，事实上这也是一种收藏保存和再次创作的工程。姜健的镜头通过分割而捕捉到的现实让我们看不到包含各种场景外框和箱子，并通过压缩后的取景, 通过正面的视觉,把观众引进“舞台”。他居中的拍摄将三维的立体拼合成二维图像，显现出每个被拍摄的戏偶的深长年代的单个状态，一个真正的拓朴学的模式。用剧照摄影的方法拍摄了这些戏偶后，姜健就开创了这些戏曲的一种“新影像”，尤其是精心挑选的角度和绝不刺眼的灯光，使他保持了对所有拍摄对象的客观性立场。没有人工操纵的痕迹，也绝无生硬的舞台设置。摄影很诚心的履行了其赋予这些终将被遗忘的纸偶第二次真实生命的职责。

　　由于太过脆弱，这些小箱子无法从它们现在的所在移到他处进行展出，而姜健的照片则充当了代替品的角色，并成为许老三的绝作唯一的视觉表达。

　　在“纱阁箱子”里的纸偶和在“照相机箱子”里的照片之间也产生了一种“迷人的关系”：这些戏偶最初被收集在箱子中为了节日或出丧展示，现在通过摄影和照相机，用另一种收藏形式向大家展示。

　　“将戏偶放进相机箱子”的整个过程，相对于考古学而言，是对国宝的一次记录，或者说是一个纪实的档案。这一正面居中的拍摄赋予戏偶一种好像有血有肉的表现体，是一种舍利子的形态，同时也是一个令人扼腕的损失所留存的遗迹片段。这些戏偶因此被抬高到一个值得信赖和富有价值的“纪念碑”的平台，同时它们超越时光成为过去存在过的一种真实印记。当我们展出这些照片时，就如同我们在重现一个几乎像考古发现的舍利子，不是它的实际存在，而是它正在慢慢化为遗迹的过程，但以全新影像的方式表现。

　　在客观摄影学派里，1990年，德国 Berndt 和 Hilla Becher 夫妇，通过他们收集的无名雕塑(水塔，鼓风机等)，仅靠了摄影媒体，却赢得了威尼斯双年展的雕塑大奖。用一种与之类似的方式，姜健也收集了一系列有关他的拍摄对象“铸件”的摄影。这是从他“主人”系列作品开始使用的一种语言，通过“马街说书”和之后的“孤儿档案”他进一步强化了这种语言：每一次都是典型的客观，保持中立的影像，和几乎雕塑般的姿态。

　　将每张照片单独来看，纱阁也可看作是“静物”摄影。静物在法语中，nature morte 是“死去的自然”，这样来看，这些小戏偶可以“死去的尸体”像一种标本收藏集来表示。但在英语里，它们是还活着的生命 -- still life，不过是凝固了，沉默的生命，这是两种语言中的矛盾。因为它们“仍然在世”，给我们联想到摄影所谓“存在过” 的历史意义。

　　无论如何我们邀请观众进入他们自己的想象世界，来看这些从死中复活的纸戏偶。有一定文化和历史背景的中国观众，尤其是戏剧爱好者，通过写在背景匾额上的剧目，不同的服饰和脸谱，以及纸偶的姿态，能立即分辨出每个人物。但对我们普通人来说，就如谚语“人生如戏”所述，我们可以从这些凝静了的姿势中看到自己的影子。我们可以发现日常生活中我们自己扮演的角色：我们每天出门前所绘画的或所佩带的面具，登上舞台前我们所选择的或所穿戴的服饰。

　　非常感谢姜健提醒我们必须对流逝岁月中的影像保持警觉。这是一次温馨的邀请，邀请我们学习在日常生活中遭遇到悲剧喜剧时运用摄影眼光，参与由姜健传授的客观性立场，这可以帮助我们对真实的幻觉保持一段安全

　　尚陆

　　策展人

　　2010年春节

　　文章写在研究法国博尔达斯出版社1994年法文版800页厚的“新摄影史”中所得到的领悟

　　^_^

　　SHAGE XIREN the Chinese Opera Paper Dolls or the Illusions of Still Life

　　It is with a certain delight that we welcome the New Year of the Tiger with this little-known work of Jiang Jian’s: “SHAGE XIREN” the Chinese Opera Paper Dolls from Pingyao – originally commissioned and later collected by the French Ministry of Culture.

　　This is a work that Jiang Jian holds dear to his heart because the photographer-musician (who graduated from the Conservatory of Music of Shenyang), began his career as a stage photographer for the Zhengzhou Opera House. “SHAGE” is a generic name designating the opera figurines set in a Shanxi lacquered box; “XI REN” means opera actors. They were created a hundred years ago by a talented craftsman Xu the Third, a lost art that no one is capable of replicating today. Jiang Jian’s photographs are now the only ‘authentic’ portraits of the paper actors of these twenty eight plays, posing in different lifelike attitudes. Today, they are so old and so fragile, and in such disrepair that they could very soon disintegrate intoashes, given the impossibility of restoring them.

　　The uniqueness of this photographic work comes not only from the SHAGE paper dolls but also from the fact that it is about conservation and re-creation. Jiang Jian’s camera, through its representation of these opera plays in the manner of a stage photographer, through carefully chosen “eye-level” angle and nonintrusive lighting, has re-created reality through fragmentation, isolating us from the box that contains each play, while the compressed and “centered” framing leads the viewer “onto the stage” through a frontal vision. In so doing, he literally flattens the three-dimensional dolls into a two-dimensional image, giving each photographed doll a status of single object emerging from the depths of the ages, a genuine typological model. Thus Jiang Jian has created a “new image” of the plays. Especially he has achieved a remarkable objectivity in relation to his photographed subjects. There is no manipulation here, nor isthere any stage setting. Photography here fulfills the function of granting a second life – just as authentic – to these dolls that were otherwise doomed to oblivion. Since they are too fragile to be moved to other places for exhibition except for their current locale, Jiang Jian’s photography acts as a substitution, as it becomes the only visible expression of craftsman Xu’s work.

　　At the same time, there is a fascinating relationship between the “dolls’ box” and the “camera box”: the miniature dolls that were originally created and placed in a lacquered box for display during the Spring Festival and funerals, are now stored inside the “camera box” - for display at photography festivals and museum exhibitions. If the dolls were originally made for collection, now the photographic reproductions are also available for collection. The whole process of “placing the dolls in the camera box” represents a recording of - or a true documentary about - a national treasure, comparable to an act of archaeological discovery. This centered and frontal photo-taking gives the paper dolls a presence, a quasi real physicality and an appearance of relic, a preserved fragment of a very comprehensive loss. The figurines are thus elevated to a status of “monument” worthy of faith and interest, while timeless; they bear the truthful imprint of what has existed in the past. When we exhibit these photographs, it is as if we exhibit once more the true object, not so much in its authenticity, but in its transposition into a relic, almost archeological, and in a representation as a new image.

　　In the school of objective photography, in 1990, Berndt and Hilla Becher, through their accumulation of representations of anonymous sculptures (water towers, blast furnaces, etc), received the grand prix for sculpture at the Venice Biennale for their sheer practice of the photographic medium. In a comparable way, Jiang Jian has accumulated a series of photographic “castings” of his subjects in their entirety. He has started to use this language in his “Masters” series (portraits of peasants in their interiors), then developed through his series on the “MAJIE Folksingers” and later his “Orphan Archives”, each time with typically objective, neutral and almost sculptural poses.

　　Taking each single photograph separately, SHAGE could also be perceived as still-life photography. A propos, still life in French means “nature morte” which would define these miniature opera actors as “preserved - dead” bodies, in the manner of a collection of stuffed animals or taxidermy art. But in English they could have been still alive as “still in life”, just immobilized and muted. These “dead nature” serving the role of accompanying the deceased during their last moment on earth, would be displayed at the funeral wake, and perform in silence a play that only the eye of the deceased could see.

　　As if the viewer is invited to enter a world of his or her own imagination. For the Chinese audience with a certain literary and historical culture, especially for opera lovers, it would be easy to immediately identify and recognize the heroes and the villains, the love story and the betrayals, the battles, treason and reward for the righteous, etc; - by simply observing the paper dolls’ costume and makeup, their dramatic pose and gesture, in these dolls made of paper, straw and clay. The calligraphy on the banners certainly is a help for the titles.

　　But for the rest of us, according to the adage “the world is a stage”, we can see ourselves reflected in these motionless poses. We can recognize our role play in the daily representation: the mask that we paint or put on before going out to meet the world, the costume that we choose to wear before we enter the scene, and the role of saint or villain we elect to play.

　　Jiang Jian’s SHAGE reminds us that we must remain attuned and even vigilant to the many illusions of the life we lead. This is a welcoming invitation for us to learn to use a photographic eye when we are confronted by daily comedy and tragedy, and to practice the lessons of objectivity that help us keep a safe distance from the illusions of unadorned reality.

　　Jean Loh

　　Curator

　　Spring Festival 2010

　　The text was written while researching the 800-page thick volume of

　　« Nouvelle histoire de la photographie » Les éditions Bordas 1994

　　(Proofreading and editing by Carole Jo Sharin)