Graphic Fiction: a Mirror to the Real World

 

 

narrative[documentation]

narrative[1-3]

 

This is a fiction written with images. It is a mirror to the real world from the past to the future. I tried to mix history,  reality and imagination in these 3 pictures. Since environment, infrastructure, and ecology are changing over time, these pictures are the transect of different moments in eternity.

The original photo was taken on the bank of the Mississippi River. It shows a typical farmland landscape in Baton Rouge. I changed it from colored to black and white photograph and reserve a belt of the original color. This belt shows what the land supposed to be. Comparing with this standard, the hue of each picture was changed. From the first one to the last, the tone of the pictures are getting darker, and different images are added to the background, representing the changes of environment, infrastructure, and ecology in human society, both development and degeneration. During hundreds of years, the land changes a little, while the human society changes dramatically.  By recording moments in the eternity, these pictures are to tell the story of what a memory human society has been bringing and will bring to the land.

In the past.  The memory of the land was attached to the civil war, plantations and slaves. A picture of a mansion in a plantation completed  in the year of 1859 and a stage photo from the movie “Gone with the Wind” were added to the basement. Both these elements are from the ages back to the civil war. I also added a frame consisted of colorful triangles to symbolize the civilization of human history, which was like a mountain that supported the base of development and raised the whole society up.

In the second picture, I collage symbols of modern industry to show the present. The image of the plane was laid out from a digital 3D model. In the present ages, we are still enjoying the boom of civilization developing. However, gradual exhaustion of natural resources and  exacerbation of environment begin to show the dark side of human civilization.

For the future,  I draw a imagination of human dwellings. These houses are like cocoons floating in the air. This shows a possibility of the future. Human’s living space is shrinking because of using up natural resources and destroying ecological system. What’s more, the triangles are becoming thorns that may hurt us and force us to leave the land and settle in the air. Caterpillar makes a cocoon and than come out becoming into a butterfly. These cocoon dwellings are a metaphor of human’s dilemma of fate. Will we be bounded by the cocoons and swallowed by the civilization that built by ourselves? Or will we pay attention to the nature ,break the cocoons and welcome a renascence? It is a choice that made by our own and we still have chance to survive.

I call these pictures a “graphic fiction” because all the elements both from photos and imaginary drawings are collaged and mixed together to tell a story that reflecting the real world. It is sort of a game of reality and imagination. Enjoy reading this fiction. 😉



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