This album of twelve images was created from a digital scan of a single frame of 35mm film shot while the artist was visiting Mount Hua, the sacred mountain of the west, in winter 2005. Through the subjective and selective process of cropping, the resulting series of images mimics the sense of shifting perspective often depicted in traditional Chinese landscape paintings. Cherney was inspired by the early-Ming dynasty painter Wang Lü (ca. 1332–1395), who is most famous for his album of scenic studies of Mount Hua and for having advocated the study of nature over that of earlier painting styles in order to achieve realism. The label strip on Cherney's wood album cover bears a seal with a legend that quotes Wang: "My eye takes Mount Hua as its teacher."

But Cherney reverses Wang's creative process: by enlarging and fragmenting a panoramic vista of the mountain, he transforms objective realism, as captured by the camera lens, into tonal abstraction. Although born and raised in the United States, Michael Cherney has adopted a Chinese name (Qiu Mai) and, in recent years, has been exploring processes that honor traditional Chinese materials, mounting techniques, and subject matter. This work is from his series of printed albums entitled Bounded by Mountains, all produced in a format that combines the technologies of photography, digital printing, and traditional.

秋麦对摄影的探索始于一次偶然的实验——他将自己拍摄的华山照片裁切后贴入一本空白经折装册页，意外发现这种拼贴方式与中国山水画的「散点透视」不谋而合。观者的视线可在局部细节与整体构图之间自由游走，如同展开一幅传统手卷。2004至2005年间，他完成了最早的《山重集》，将一张35毫米胶片拍摄的华山雪景数码扫描后，经主观裁切重组为十二联图像，使摄影的写实镜头转化为近似水墨的抽象韵律。

这一创作方式受到东西方两种传统的启发：既有明代文人「剪贴集册」的雅趣，又借鉴了19世纪欧洲「组合摄影」的暗房技术。但秋麦的独特之处在于，他并非简单模仿古画，而是通过精确的构图计算，让摄影的焦点在册页开合间自然转换，使山脉岩壁在同一画面中呈现多重视角。《山重集-华山图》的创作直接对话明初画家王履的《华山图》传统。通过经折装册页这一载体，秋麦将摄影影像转化为既可独立成章又能组合观看的视觉诗篇——当册页徐徐展开时，那些经过精密裁切的华山片段宛若山峦起伏般交叠呈现，在观者眼前构筑起一个充满韵律的纸上山水世界。每一帧局部特写都如同撷取自文化长河的切片：岩石的肌理保留了北宋山水"斧劈皴"般的笔意，云雾的留白处尤显空灵，而这一切又经由摄影镜头特有的即时性被赋予当代的诠释。这种独特的视觉语法，既延续了传统山水画"饱游饫看"的观察方式，又以数字时代的影像技术重写了"外师造化"的艺术宣言。