Zhang Jingna (zemotion)

Most artists who browse the web have probably heard of zemotion, the net alias of multi-talented photographer Zhang Jingna.
For me, she was one of the first people whose work I started to follow when I began to appreciate the wonders possible in photography. Her work impressed me hugely, not only because of its beauty and vision, which I'll get to in a moment, but because of the breadth of her activities. She not only did photography, and modeled, and designed, but also had competed in air rifle and broken a (Singapore) national record--And to underline those achievements, she was not that much older than me. Despite being such a talented, busy person, she also took the time to interact with her audience. I was instantly in awe.

My tastes have always slanted toward the fantastic, but I am particularly enchanted by works that bring our realities and fantasy into harmony in such a deftly natural way. Charles de Lint and Alice Hoffman are favorites for this reason. Jingna has this skill too, this eye for bringing a spark of otherworldliness into photos--a way of making photos speak not only of the real life counterparts they captured in the moment, but a sense of the mysterious, the romantic, the teasing possibility of another interpretation; her subjects always have a story to tell. And I enjoy, too, that she often accompanies her photos with a few lines or a poem, showing that she thinks about and is invested in her pieces; clearly this depth isn't something that just happens without effort, nor is it just the viewer reading into photos that the artist took just for the hell of it.

Some works of hers that I like, with my own comments:

The fabric textures bloom around the girl like smoke, her skin is lit by the coldest light. The four corners are edged by a darkness that might swallow the brightness any moment and melt her away into the night. 

Dappled by sunlight, all angles and arches, she is graceful and poised. Her gaze is directed out of the frame, her lips slightly downturned, contemplating and planning her ascent to greater heights.

Direction is confused; the dark printed roses seem, like ravens, to want to fly out of the frame. She is the stable element of the picture, but her body reflects turmoil too. Only her eyes are commanding, arresting, a presence out of the midst of chaos and ephemera, like a ghost, like a Haunting, or like one haunted. 

The sharpness of Jingna's focus both tantalizes and appeases: it brings us the hyper-real sensation of her vision-- the vision more perfect than our reality, and just out of reach.

All photos belong to Zhang Jingna
www.ZhangJingna.com
www.zemotion.deviantart.com
facebook.com/zemotion/