2017年逝者：任航，滿足一種美的渴望

Jun Sui didn’t plan to get naked for the Chinese art photographer Ren Hang. But as the day wore on, she loosened up, and the clothes came off. Ren’s shoots could become electrified with the illicitness of being nude, especially when they were in public, where such activity in China guarantees arrest or worse. The atmosphere of adventure created trust, as did the spirit of rebellion. “There was a sense of being free,” Sui told me. In person, Sui is demure, inconspicuous; in Ren’s photographs, her eyes blaze from her crouch between two upright women, her arms snaking between their thighs. “We hide the body in our culture,” Ren once said; in China, it is “a demoralization to show what they think should be private.” Ren, Sui said, encouraged everyone around him to shed that conditioning.

Jun Sui并未打算為中國(guó)藝術(shù)攝影師任航脫光衣服。但隨著那天工作的進(jìn)展，她變得更加放松，衣服也就脫了下來(lái)。任航的拍照可能也因此變得令人興奮，因?yàn)槁泱w有違社會(huì)常規(guī)，尤其是在公共場(chǎng)所，在中國(guó)，這種行為肯定會(huì)導(dǎo)致被逮捕或更糟的事情發(fā)生。冒險(xiǎn)的氣氛創(chuàng)造了信任，反叛的精神也一樣。“有一種自由的感覺(jué)，”Jun Sui對(duì)我說(shuō)。她外貌端莊，并不引人注目。在任航的照片里，她曲卷在兩個(gè)直立的女子之間，胳膊從她們的大腿間伸過(guò)，兩眼閃閃發(fā)光。“在我們的文化中，我們把身體隱藏起來(lái)，”任航曾說(shuō)，在中國(guó)，“展示人們認(rèn)為應(yīng)該是私密的東西是一種不道德的行為。”Jun Sui說(shuō)，任航鼓勵(lì)他身邊的人擺脫那種文化熏陶。

Ren once described his work as “satisfying a thirst.” He found beauty in almost everything — a person, a snake, a flower — and trained his camera on his friends and his boyfriend, Jiaqi, turning their bodies into sculptures. In a 2013 Vice interview, the reporter fixated on a series of photographs of people urinating — into the air, on each other, into a colorful tropical drink. “What’s with all the pee in your photos?” the reporter asked, perhaps hoping for a lurid answer. Ren had none. “I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way,” he said. In other words, urinating isn’t scandalous or erotic — it’s a biological reality, at once amusing and a fact.

任航曾把自己的工作描述為“滿足一種渴望”。他在幾乎所有的東西上——一個(gè)人、一條蛇、一朵花——找到了美，然后把自己的照相機(jī)對(duì)準(zhǔn)他的朋友和他的男友Jiaqi，把他們的身體變成了雕塑。2013年，他接受《Vice》雜志的采訪時(shí)，記者把注意力集中在了人對(duì)著空中、對(duì)著對(duì)方、對(duì)著一種色彩鮮艷的熱帶飲料小便的一系列照片。“你照片上的所有這些撒尿是怎么回事?”記者問(wèn)，也許希望得到一個(gè)駭人聽(tīng)聞的回答。任航?jīng)]能滿足記者的愿望。“我喜歡用新的、生動(dòng)和感性的方式來(lái)描繪每個(gè)器官，”他說(shuō)。換句話說(shuō)，小便并不是可恥的事情，也不帶色情——而是一個(gè)生物學(xué)的現(xiàn)實(shí)，既好笑，又是一個(gè)事實(shí)。

In Ren’s photographs, the body never seems ordinary; it’s humorous, bizarre, sublime — even unnerving. There are people piled on top of one another, penises placed delicately on cheeks, pelvises thrusting skyward. Sexuality and gender become fluid, destabilized. The images should be shocking or titillating, but somehow they’re not. Spread orifices seem as pretty and delicate as a palm frond or a lily.

任航照片中的人體看上去從來(lái)都不普通;有的幽默，有的怪誕，有的崇高，甚至令人不安。有一個(gè)壓在一個(gè)身上的人堆，有小心翼翼地放在臉頰上的陰莖，有推向天空的骨盆。性感和性別變得不確定、不穩(wěn)定。這些圖片本該令人震驚或煽動(dòng)情欲，但不知何故它們并不這樣。照片展現(xiàn)的人體孔洞與棕櫚葉或百合花一樣精致漂亮。

Ren picked up a point-and-shoot camera out of boredom at 17, while he was a student at the Communication University of China. His photographs were first shown a few years later in Beijing, and he was almost immediately anointed a rising star in the art world. He had shows in Paris, in Vienna, in New York, but at home, Ren ran afoul of local authorities and was arrested frequently. One exhibition in China was shut down by censors on “suspicion of sex”; at others, people spat on his work.

還在中國(guó)傳媒大學(xué)讀書時(shí)，17歲的任航百無(wú)聊賴中拿起了一臺(tái)傻瓜相機(jī)。幾年后，他的攝影在北京首次展出，他幾乎立即就被認(rèn)定為藝術(shù)世界里的一顆新星。他在巴黎、維也納、紐約辦過(guò)展覽，但在國(guó)內(nèi)，任航卻與地方當(dāng)局起了沖突，常被逮捕。一次在中國(guó)的展覽因“涉嫌性內(nèi)容”未能過(guò)審而被叫停，還曾有人朝他的作品吐口水。

Ren’s images tell a story about Chinese youth, a generation pushing back against censorship and societal restrictions. The American understanding of China is filtered through years of politics; we rarely see the culture on its own terms. Ren’s work challenges our stereotypes. He once said he didn’t want others to have “the impression that Chinese people are robots.” Life is present in all his images, but so is death. One image features a fully nude woman hanging by her feet from a rope in a barren tree. Others show heads submerged in bags of water, bodies consumed by smoke. There’s an entire series of bodies half-buried in fields. His work seemed to acknowledge that the price of living is dying.

任航的照片講述了中國(guó)青年的故事，這是反抗審查制度和社會(huì)約束的一代。多年來(lái)，美國(guó)人對(duì)中國(guó)的理解是經(jīng)過(guò)政治過(guò)濾的，卻很少通過(guò)他們的視角來(lái)看他們的文化。任航的作品挑戰(zhàn)了我們的固有偏見(jiàn)。他曾說(shuō)過(guò)他不希望別人“對(duì)中國(guó)人的印象是機(jī)器人”。他所有的照片都表現(xiàn)了生命，但也表現(xiàn)了死亡。有的拍了一個(gè)雙腳被繩子倒吊在枯樹上的全裸女子。有的可以看到頭顱沒(méi)入一袋袋水中，身體被煙霧吞噬。還有整整一個(gè)系列都是半埋在地里的身體。他的作品似乎是在承認(rèn)，生命的代價(jià)是死亡。

“He repeated over and over that nothing was ever planned for photographs,” said Dian Hanson, an editor at Taschen who worked with Ren on a monograph of his photographs that was published earlier this year. “Nothing was planned in his life. He was determined to live in the moment always. There was no thought for the future. In retrospect, one sees that as a plan not to be around for very long.”

“他再三重復(fù)自己從來(lái)不為拍攝做計(jì)劃，”今年早些時(shí)候與任航合作出版了攝影作品集的塔森出版社(Taschen)編輯迪安·漢森(Dian Hanson)說(shuō)。“他的生命里沒(méi)有什么是計(jì)劃好的。他決心要永遠(yuǎn)活在當(dāng)下。對(duì)未來(lái)沒(méi)有任何考慮?，F(xiàn)在回想起來(lái)，這可以看成是一個(gè)不打算在此地久留的計(jì)劃。”

Though he rarely discussed it, Ren suffered from depression. In China, mental health is almost as taboo as nudity, and Ren projected happiness to make people comfortable, but he frequently posted desperate journal entries on his website. On July 19, 2016, he wrote, “Every person is suddenly like an enormous wound.” Several months later, in February, at age 29, he jumped to his death from the 28th floor of a building.

盡管任航很少談及，但他患有抑郁癥。在中國(guó)，心理健康幾乎是和裸體一樣的禁忌，為了不造成他人的不安，任航會(huì)表現(xiàn)出快樂(lè)的樣子，但他常常在自己的網(wǎng)站上發(fā)表一些絕望的日記。2016年7月19日，他寫道，“整個(gè)人就像一個(gè)巨大的傷口。”數(shù)月后的2月，他從一座建筑的28層跳樓身亡，時(shí)年29歲。

Hanson told me she doesn’t know what will happen to Ren’s legacy. Like many people in China, his family, who now control his estate, did not approve of his work. A journalist once asked Ren how he coped with the refusal of acceptance in China. “True, I’m restricted here,” he said. “The more I’m limited by my country, the more I want my country to take me in and accept me for who I am and what I do.”

漢森告訴我，她不知道人們會(huì)如何處理任航的遺產(chǎn)。現(xiàn)在掌管著他遺產(chǎn)的家人，和很多中國(guó)人一樣并不認(rèn)可他的作品。一個(gè)記者曾問(wèn)過(guò)任航，他如何應(yīng)對(duì)在中國(guó)無(wú)法被接納。“沒(méi)錯(cuò)，我在中國(guó)是受到了限制，”他說(shuō)。“國(guó)家對(duì)我的限制越多，我就越希望國(guó)家能收留我，能接受我這個(gè)人，接受我所做的事。”