Muge
Ash
Published by Zen Foto Gallery and Muge Gallery, 2019
Size: 27.3 x 21.7 cm
132 Pages
Softcover
Languages: English
A new edition of Chinese artist Muge's tranquil photobook "Ash," published by Japanese publisher Zen Foto Gallery.
Based on Lao Tze's "Theory of Nature," Muge's series approaches objects, landscapes, and places from the perspective not of an intruder or observer, but as an insider, as someone who belongs, giving his subjects the space to survive, grow, decay, and simply exist. Divided into three parts ("Still Life," "Shan Shui," and "Scenery"), Muge's images draw on symbolism and metaphor to create larger connections between the book's pages. The three parts of the book are stacked on top of each other, forming a staircase-like design, with each photo printed in black and gray and finished "with a glossy varnish, a matte varnish, or a special colored varnish, according to the delicate state of each object." - the publisher writes
“When I used the camera to understand my hometown as it is now, I discovered that all things in the real world stem from our internal desire: the cycle of Karma of longing for nature, destroying nature, and repairing nature (...) These images are drawn from the understandings gleaned from my daily life, conveying the traces of time and history in nature, and a person's thoughts about the future in the face of reality.”
- Muge