In a recent conversation on my friend Kay Kendall photo site on flickr about a photo she posted of a friend of hers of Chinese descent, and the friends dreams as a young girl ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/kkendall/3458742400/) I said the following:
This is such a thought-provoking quote and photo .... for this is one of the things that fascinates me most about this awesome country and this gentle culture: constant crowds and the psychological influence of these on the individual - and eventually on the whole culture.
Arriving in China from Africa, a place drowning in space, it did not take me long before I started wondering about the effects of incessant crowds on one's psyche. From personal experience and from speaking to expat friends having lived here for an extended period of time, I have found that constant crowds do have definite influences on us. First to be affected is one's visual awareness, ie, is one aware of one's surroundings or does one "switch off" to one's surroundings in order to survive mentally. Most expats in China I have spoken to have told me that their visual awareness has decreased with time as simply switching off becomes a kind of a defense mechanism. Personally, when out on a pavement (without my cam, lol), I have found that my own visual awareness has decreased to as little as one foot in stead of the previous dozens of meters! The reason is simple: for most of the time one simply can't see any further than a few feet ahead in any case, so I guess the eyes just stop looking .... An amazingly interesting field of study, with China the perfect laboratory. My local students and I often talk about this, and those having lived abroad for some time absolutely agree with me on these inter-related themes. Two last thoughts on this: do not confuse spatial awareness with visual awareness as, somehow, spatial seems to be far more primordial ... and, how about this for a thesis, "How crowds influence visual awareness and how visual awareness influences culture" ?
Well, many a conversation were generated on Kay's photo, both in response to my and to others' comments, but Kay came back with something that made me think ... She said, " I see it as a PICTURE book."
That made me delve into my photos of the last two months to get some recent ones of this phenomena - crowds. Hopefully some of the following will give you an idea of what I meant when I said crowds in China makes it impossible for one to plan ahead or to think about the next corner. It is just in your face, almost constantly.
A few weeks ago, with camera held above my head in Yu Yuan Gardens. Try planning a route through this .....
Two days ago on the corner outside our apartment. SPOT THE BRIDE in the crowd ....
Also, two days ago, going into the park, camera at chest height.
In the park, from a vantage point about 60cm / 2 feet above the crowd
Chest height, walking amongst a crowd .... how do I plan to go ahead?
Chest height, exiting the park. Again, how does one plan for this? No wonder one stops looking ahead and planning - eventually simply stops planning for anything. What will be, will be ....
Exiting the Yu Yuan, again, held above my head walking / pushed on by the crowds ....
No comments:
Post a Comment