“My photography is for a specific purpose. It is for recording a long-scale view of history.”
Fu Qiumeng Fine Art and the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong jointly present A Profile of Michael Cherney. The film was made in conjunction with the show of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney at the University Museum and Art Gallery of the University of Hong Kong, entitled From 2 Arises 3: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney. In this film, you will hear about the following themes: the relationship between photography and history, factors that influence his visual language (season and time, the camera and the film, the use of xuan paper), and how the practice of photography mediates between the artist and the world.
 |
 |
Michael Cherney studied Chinese language and history at the State University of New York at Binghamton, followed by graduate language study at Beijing Language Institute. A self- taught photographer, Cherney’s formal studies, combined with his rigorous personal studies of China’s art historical past, have resulted in his abiding appreciation and even reverence for China’s rich history and painting tradition, particularly landscape painting. His relationship with China has been deepened by his residence in Beijing for well over two decades along with his extensive travel throughout China, seeking out the specific sites that have historical relevance to his work. He has described his art as a way “to look upon a place imbued with a vast (sometimes daunting) accumulation of history and cultural memory, and then to capture one instant, fleeting, tangible moment of it with a photograph.”
