Yu Mo
Small Town Story
My work is called Small Town Story. Counting from 2005, the town had been in existence for around a decade. I selected some of the photos I had taken each year, trying to turn them into a body of photos. Like using images to tile weighed-down town walls.
I love wandering. Idle people can be hypocritical or prone to uncertainty. As I wander around with my camera to collect images, the town unwittingly gains form.
I like film, square and straight and quiet like a small town. TV is also square, but the screen is not peaceful and the city is too rough.
I like small towns, with a scale you can touch. Not so aggressive or large that you can’t reach the edge, but still living con gusto, with vibrancy. With nothing better to do, parents can chat for a while.
Strike up a conversation and there’s your story. I like listening to stories when i was a little boy. Some stories are pretty straight-forward, and others give you just a hint. Some have endings, others are endless. I do not like stories with clear endings, just as if the outcome of a photo is clear, it makes people eager for good or bad. Isn’t it better for something to grow slowly, the anticipation of it? No matter if angry or sad, happy or mournful, this also becomes a part of the story.
People apart and connected, round and round the city, inside and outside, are the story. The story is both event and time. Steady, generation by generation, the story is city and is country. The photo is a cross-section of time and a mirror of the event. It is the boundary of time and space, the boundary between truth and falsehood, the solid and the rheological, the preserved and the forgotten. The picture is the border of the town, the walls of the story. But no matter how strong a city's walls, they will collapse, yet the story will be endless.
I don’t want to give them too big a meaning, but I hope these photos temporarily store meaning, like stories in a small town.
