2017年逝者：任航，满足一种美的渴望
Jun Sui并未打算为中国艺术摄影师任航脱光衣服。但随着那天工作的进展，她变得更加放松，衣服也就脱了下来。任航的拍照可能也因此变得令人兴奋，因为裸体有违社会常规，尤其是在公共场所，在中国，这种行为肯定会导致被逮捕或更糟的事情发生。冒险的气氛创造了信任，反叛的精神也一样。“有一种自由的感觉，”Jun Sui对我说。她外貌端庄，并不引人注目。在任航的照片里，她曲卷在两个直立的女子之间，胳膊从她们的大腿间伸过，两眼闪闪发光。“在我们的文化中，我们把身体隐藏起来，”任航曾说，在中国，“展示人们认为应该是私密的东西是一种不道德的行为。”Jun Sui说，任航鼓励他身边的人摆脱那种文化熏陶。
Ren once described his work as “satisfying a thirst.” He found beauty in almost everything — a person, a snake, a flower — and trained his camera on his friends and his boyfriend, Jiaqi, turning their bodies into sculptures. In a 2013 Vice interview, the reporter fixated on a series of photographs of people urinating — into the air, on each other, into a colorful tropical drink. “What’s with all the pee in your photos?” the reporter asked, perhaps hoping for a lurid answer. Ren had none. “I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way,” he said. In other words, urinating isn’t scandalous or erotic — it’s a biological reality, at once amusing and a fact.
任航曾把自己的工作描述为“满足一种渴望”。他在几乎所有的东西上——一个人、一条蛇、一朵花——找到了美，然后把自己的照相机对准他的朋友和他的男友Jiaqi，把他们的身体变成了雕塑。2013年，他接受《Vice》杂志的采访时，记者把注意力集中在了人对着空中、对着对方、对着一种色彩鲜艳的热带饮料小便的一系列照片。“你照片上的所有这些撒尿是怎么回事?”记者问，也许希望得到一个骇人听闻的回答。任航没能满足记者的愿望。“我喜欢用新的、生动和感性的方式来描绘每个器官，”他说。换句话说，小便并不是可耻的事情，也不带色情——而是一个生物学的现实，既好笑，又是一个事实。
In Ren’s photographs, the body never seems ordinary; it’s humorous, bizarre, sublime — even unnerving. There are people piled on top of one another, penises placed delicately on cheeks, pelvises thrusting skyward. Sexuality and gender become fluid, destabilized. The images should be shocking or titillating, but somehow they’re not. Spread orifices seem as pretty and delicate as a palm frond or a lily.
任航照片中的人体看上去从来都不普通;有的幽默，有的怪诞，有的崇高，甚至令人不安。有一个压在一个身上的人堆，有小心翼翼地放在脸颊上的阴茎，有推向天空的骨盆。性感和性别变得不确定、不稳定。这些图片本该令人震惊或煽动情欲，但不知何故它们并不这样。照片展现的人体孔洞与棕榈叶或百合花一样精致漂亮。
Ren picked up a point-and-shoot camera out of boredom at 17, while he was a student at the Communication University of China. His photographs were first shown a few years later in Beijing, and he was almost immediately anointed a rising star in the art world. He had shows in Paris, in Vienna, in New York, but at home, Ren ran afoul of local authorities and was arrested frequently. One exhibition in China was shut down by censors on “suspicion of sex”; at others, people spat on his work.
还在中国传媒大学读书时，17岁的任航百无聊赖中拿起了一台傻瓜相机。几年后，他的摄影在北京首次展出，他几乎立即就被认定为艺术世界里的一颗新星。他在巴黎、维也纳、纽约办过展览，但在国内，任航却与地方当局起了冲突，常被逮捕。一次在中国的展览因“涉嫌性内容”未能过审而被叫停，还曾有人朝他的作品吐口水。
Ren’s images tell a story about Chinese youth, a generation pushing back against censorship and societal restrictions. The American understanding of China is filtered through years of politics; we rarely see the culture on its own terms. Ren’s work challenges our stereotypes. He once said he didn’t want others to have “the impression that Chinese people are robots.” Life is present in all his images, but so is death. One image features a fully nude woman hanging by her feet from a rope in a barren tree. Others show heads submerged in bags of water, bodies consumed by smoke. There’s an entire series of bodies half-buried in fields. His work seemed to acknowledge that the price of living is dying.
任航的照片讲述了中国青年的故事，这是反抗审查制度和社会约束的一代。多年来，美国人对中国的理解是经过政治过滤的，却很少通过他们的视角来看他们的文化。任航的作品挑战了我们的固有偏见。他曾说过他不希望别人“对中国人的印象是机器人”。他所有的照片都表现了生命，但也表现了死亡。有的拍了一个双脚被绳子倒吊在枯树上的全裸女子。有的可以看到头颅没入一袋袋水中，身体被烟雾吞噬。还有整整一个系列都是半埋在地里的身体。他的作品似乎是在承认，生命的代价是死亡。
“He repeated over and over that nothing was ever planned for photographs,” said Dian Hanson, an editor at Taschen who worked with Ren on a monograph of his photographs that was published earlier this year. “Nothing was planned in his life. He was determined to live in the moment always. There was no thought for the future. In retrospect, one sees that as a plan not to be around for very long.”
“他再三重复自己从来不为拍摄做计划，”今年早些时候与任航合作出版了摄影作品集的塔森出版社(Taschen)编辑迪安·汉森(Dian Hanson)说。“他的生命里没有什么是计划好的。他决心要永远活在当下。对未来没有任何考虑。现在回想起来，这可以看成是一个不打算在此地久留的计划。”
Though he rarely discussed it, Ren suffered from depression. In China, mental health is almost as taboo as nudity, and Ren projected happiness to make people comfortable, but he frequently posted desperate journal entries on his website. On July 19, 2016, he wrote, “Every person is suddenly like an enormous wound.” Several months later, in February, at age 29, he jumped to his death from the 28th floor of a building.
尽管任航很少谈及，但他患有抑郁症。在中国，心理健康几乎是和裸体一样的禁忌，为了不造成他人的不安，任航会表现出快乐的样子，但他常常在自己的网站上发表一些绝望的日记。2016年7月19日，他写道，“整个人就像一个巨大的伤口。”数月后的2月，他从一座建筑的28层跳楼身亡，时年29岁。
Hanson told me she doesn’t know what will happen to Ren’s legacy. Like many people in China, his family, who now control his estate, did not approve of his work. A journalist once asked Ren how he coped with the refusal of acceptance in China. “True, I’m restricted here,” he said. “The more I’m limited by my country, the more I want my country to take me in and accept me for who I am and what I do.”
汉森告诉我，她不知道人们会如何处理任航的遗产。现在掌管着他遗产的家人，和很多中国人一样并不认可他的作品。一个记者曾问过任航，他如何应对在中国无法被接纳。“没错，我在中国是受到了限制，”他说。“国家对我的限制越多，我就越希望国家能收留我，能接受我这个人，接受我所做的事。”
