Two Ecounters

Chuhan Zhang

chuhanhere@gmail.com

The difference between me and Google Maps is the core of my current creation theme, which is "two encounters". First of all, from the perspective of time, the shooting time between me and Google Maps is different. The street views I selected from Google Maps range from 2016 to 2022, which results in subtle differences in the scenes, such as the buildings on either side of the road. In terms of emotions, as a "person", I bring my own subjective emotions, while Google Maps is a street view captured by a car, which is a different emotional dimension. In this dimension, I want to talk about the "decisive moment" in photography, which I believe is a powerful force that goes beyond subjective emotions, technical abilities, and even equipment conditions.

Finally, there is the narrative dimension of my series of works, which consists of two aspects. One aspect is the storytelling conveyed by the characters in the Google Street View screenshots that I selected. The other aspect is the process of my "two encounters" with the same scene, from selecting the screenshot to going to the actual location to take pictures. After selecting the screenshot, I relied on the latitude and longitude provided by the map to find the location that I had never been to before. I believe that all of these aspects combined make up my work, which I named "Two Encounters".