Documentary Photography "Non-Decisive Moment": Contemporary Daily Poetics and Relaxation Narrative

1. Aesthetic rebellion from dramatic climax to daily gaze

Why do many photographers take photos of countless thrilling leaps and exaggerated laughter, but their works seem empty and impetuous and cannot be tasted?

• Aesthetic fatigue at the decisive moment:
• Traditional documentary photography is overly obsessed with "The Climax" (the leap over a puddle, a politician's handshake, a throw in a riot);
• This pursuit of strong drama can easily reduce photography to visual spectacle and juggling snapshots, ignoring 99% of the real state of life;
• The birth of the Non-Decisive Moment:
• Occurs in the blank space of "before anything happens, or just after something happens";
• An empty crossroads in a small town under the slanting sunlight, a greasy plate with omelette left unpacked after breakfast, and a red-haired girl leaning in front of the barbed wire fence of a gas station with a vacant look;
• Decentralization and relaxation: Do not forcibly create tension and conflict, but gaze at the texture of daily reality with calm, controlled, and profound eyes, and salvage the poetry and loneliness of existentialism in the ordinary.

2. Three major construction grammars of contemporary non-decisive moments

1. The Neutral Eye-Level Glance:

• Completely abandon extreme close-to-the-ground shots or high-altitude dives, and keep the camera position strictly at the eye level of a standing or sitting human being;
• Choose a focal length of 40mm to 50mm, which is extremely close to the monocular perspective of the naked eye, showing an unbiased, objective and careful sense of restraint.

2. Understated Emotional Resonance:

• Not filming the crying, just filming the slight moistness in the eyes;
• Not a photo of the passionate embrace, just a photo of the two fingers faintly hanging in the air at the corner of the table;
• Leave the emotional blank to the audience, allowing the audience to figure out the entire life story behind it in silence.

3. Still life and traces as metaphorical carriers (Traces of Human Presence):

• There are often no characters in the picture, but the warmth and traces of the human beings who have just left are everywhere:
• Plastic folding chairs littered with cigarette butts, reflections of puddles of water run over by car wheels, and a small piece of wall peeling off in the corner;
• Objects take on a solemn monumental character under the erosion of time.

3. Avoiding Pitfalls: The Essential Divide Between Advanced Daily Poetics and Mediocre Waste Films

• Fatal misunderstanding: Taking photos randomly is not art!
• Many beginners mistakenly believe that taking a photo of a trash can or a telephone pole on the roadside is contemporary art;
• The watershed lies in: extremely strict sense of order and internal density (Internal Density):
• The master's inconclusive works, although the content is dull, the color relationship within the picture is extremely tight (such as Shore's strict control of the complementary fine-tuning of red and green);
• Full frame edge tension is tight, every inch of space in the four corners serves the overall atmosphere, without any unconscious penetration or impurities;
• It requires photographers to have deeper humanistic accumulation, sharper philosophical observation and purer patience.

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