無 whatever is not

石 stone

為 is

光 light

Excerpt from Native Stone by Octavio Paz

Where does the camera touch nature? Cherney answers this question with a misty landscape. As the contour of the mountain diffuses into light and grain, the language of nature translates into that of the camera, expanding each other out of their material limits.

“Whatever is not stone is light” is Octavio Paz’s poetic binary of sublime landscape, and Cherney sees an echo in the misty mountains in far west Xinjiang. As Paz’s light and stone speak to each other in text, Cherney’s light and stone do the same in image, responding to Within the Gate’s theme of bilingual representation of a single meaning, opening the gate to not only audiences from diverse backgrounds but also processes of knowing from diverse readings across literature and photography.

Cherney further transcends the viewership on the Mexican poet’s trajectory with the misty effect that flows out of its limits to touch the viewer. “Landscapes enormous as insomnia” is Paz’s limitless sight in the prose above, analogizing the visuality with the insomnia’s effortless attempt between light and stone; the diffusing shade is Cherney’s limitless wings, muting the distinction between light and stone as dissolving the frames of things. Through photography, the world is rethought and returned to its primal chaos as the things to their poetic beings.

摄影于何处触碰自然？秋麦以一幅朦胧山景作答。当山势弥漫进光影与银盐颗粒，自然的语言也被译为摄影的语言，互相延展，突破彼此物性的极限。

“无石为光”是奥塔维奥·帕斯对崇高山水诗性的二元命题，秋麦则在新疆西境迷蒙的山脉中找到其回响。帕斯的光与石以语言交谈，秋麦的光与石亦以影像交谈，回扣「其间」系列对一个意义进行双语表达的主题，不仅将多元观众包容其间，也包容文学与摄影解读的多元认知过程。

通过漫出边界，触及观者的迷蒙视效，秋麦在帕斯的路径上将观看视角进一步超然。帕斯笔下“失眠般无垠之山水”的无边之境将视觉体验与失眠在光与石之间无力的挣扎类比；而秋麦弥漫的渐变是他的无边之翅，淡化了光与石的界限如同消解了万物的界限。通过秋麦的摄影，世界得以被重新思考，并被还原至原初之混沌，万物亦回归其诗意之存在。