Walking around 798 one afternoon, I wandered fromgallery to gallery only to find myself lost and without apurpose so I just kept wandering until I happened uponSpace Zero. Outside were several celebratory flower stands, with theircongratulatory messages. It was an art opening and as I made my wayinside I was completely unprepared for what I was about to experience.As soon as I made my way up the steps and turned left an image ofBuddha perched in a rocky cliff called to me. The photo, Buddhahood in the Light-1, taken at the Yungang grottoes made me feel as if I was some ancient explorer happening upon the scene for the first time.

　　Given that Shi uses a photographic process whereby the whites are reversed to blacks and vice versa, the image of Buddha in those grottoes was completely reimagined, and given a in incredible amount of spiritual meaning. Now, as opposed to what one normally sees with a normal photograph, Shi has managed to capture the light swirling around the heat from the rocks, and the sense that there is something alive.

　　Shi Min Feng born in 1968 in Beijing, is the Deputy Dean of the School of Art and Design at the Beijing Institute of Graphic Communications. While having an extensive catalogue of photos and many exhibitions in China under his belt, Shi is on the cusp of gaining international exposure, given his formidable talent.

　　“The details on the surface of Buddha, separating from the limitation of light and shadow, appears gradually from the lights coming from the rear, Buddha appears from the gaps in the rocks. The spiritual essence of ancestors, the disappearance of nature, the changes in humans, precipitates a thousand years’ of history with complicated symbols bombarding me. This is what I wanted.” Shi told me in a conversation afterwards.

　　For example when one looks at a photo Buddhahood in the Light-12 from a series entitled, “Longmen Grottoes” there is this ancient Buddha wrapped in light. This may be the greatest example of mixing the inverse technique with such heavy spiritual subject matter. What you feel after viewing this photo will undoubtedly leave you moved, and wondering what else do we fail to see with our eyes, that exists but needs to be decoded through technology and various artistic wizardry.

　　Another work of Shi’s from his book, “The Mirrored Horizon”, Chaya Mountain series, shows a sense that the earth is alive, pulsating a glowing heat from within the mountain. Each fissure suggesting that we are standing on a very thin crust atop a sea of molten rock, whose life giving essence bubbles just below the surface.

　　Shi says he found the charm in using the Inverse process purely by accident, the dark part of image is lightened up after the inversing process. The ‘Buddha lights’ appeared, as if the Buddha is enshrouded in light, then the whole image became meaningful. On another hand, the image after being inverted conveys the glamour of the Han dynasty portrait bricks, the pictures look exactly like rubbings.

　　While most digital cameras these days offer the average enthusiast the ability to use the “negative art” settings to yield a vague approximation of what Shi is aiming for, it would be wrong to dismiss his work as a digital gimmick. In fact his photos are very much aided by his traditional background as a Chinese water ink landscape painter from early age.

　　So why choose this subject matter? Haven’t Buddhist caves,grottoes, and temples been filmed to death? Certainly there is a numbness and prejudice that one carries with them if you’ve lived in China long enough, where this just seems like an obvious way to cash in on ones cultural heritage. Which is why upon seeing Shi’s work, you realize he has cast his subjects in another light (no pun intended). The marriage of philosophy, painting and photography and the need for spiritual connection is a lofty and difficult to reach ambition for most if not all who claim to make art, yet this is where Shi finds himself, at this intersecting world, which he offers up in large doses.

　　Shi told me he has travelled to lots of places, including Qinghai, Gansu, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and many others and has taken some beautiful landscape photos and ethnic life photos. “At the beginning I was very excited with these photo, however as time passed by, I always felt there was something missing… I do not like simplicity. I want to carry more information and connotation in my photo. In today’s civilized world, the grottoes have lost their original function and meaning. They are reduced to simply being a tourist destination. It is really regretful,”he says.

　　As he sees it, the world we are living in now is much like the chaotic world beneath the shadows of light, and human beings, regarding themselves as the “owners” of the world, are addicted to taking as many resources as they can from it. Humans no longer posses fear of the universe and have lost the opportunity to observe and think from a different perspective.

　　“Perhaps when you bring yourself to a calm state of mind, watching the grotto in the twilight, you will find a misty Buddha figure standing in front of you, we are staring right at him, he is also looking at us and our world silently. The spirit from a thousand years suddenly connects with that from the modern world.”