21st Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Artistic
HANABI

This is an inverted photograph of firework. The aperture opens when the firework starts, and closes when it despairs. The whole existence of this sudden beauty is recorded by the camera permanently. Then the image is inverted in the post-process. In the Chinese Yin-yang philosophy, When Yin is at its extreme, Yang emerges; when Yang is at its extreme, Yin arises. The burst of fireworks is a form of extreme brightness, which represents the ‘Yang reaches its extreme.’ By inverting the photograph, the Yin emerges. Also, Inverting the imagery is to go back in time to the beginning of the photography and the starting point of ‘ permanent recording’, and to invert it is to invert the standard representation, the normal perception, an attempt to make people read it deeper, not just its appearances, to give it its own identity. HANABI reminds me of the lives of every living entity on Earth. All temporal, all different but all beautiful, and every existence is a celebration in its own sense, and all have their extrinsic, unseen beauty beneath their appearances.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 01.2023
Date Uploaded: 11.2023
Photo Location: China
Camera: PENTAX 645Z
Copyright: © Zixi Xia