3 Photos
[caption id="attachment_49740" align="alignnone" width="750"] "Untitled," 2011, courtesy Philippe Cheng.[/caption]
By Michelle Trauring
“Since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things.”—E.E. Cummings, “Since Feeling is First.”
When photographer Philippe Cheng first moved to Bridgehampton, he didn’t have many friends. Outside of his wife, artist Bastienne Schmidt, and their 3-year-old son, Max, the closest companion he had was his camera.
Not that it particularly bothered him. After settling in, Mr. Cheng headed for the famed open fields, the vast harbors, the quiet forests and the serene beaches of the East End—his Hasselblad by his side—and through his viewfinder, the East End became a character in his eyes, a landscape with a personality and endless surprises, and even a friend.
“For me, wherever I am, I’m making images,” he recalled during a recent telephone interview. “It happened quickly.”
[caption id="attachment_49741" align="aligncenter" width="800"]
Artist Philippe Cheng, photographed near his Bridgehampton home on March 31. Michael Heller photo.[/caption]
Four months passed. Then, in the early morning hours of February 8, 2002, Ms. Schmidt—who was due to give birth in two weeks—felt all-too-familiar contractions. Her husband called 911.
By the time the EMT crew arrived, Ms. Schmidt was already in her bathtub. They wouldn’t make it to the hospital. The only option was a home birth, and the medics sprang into action.
But when Julian Noa Benjamin Cheng finally arrived, his chest was still. He was not breathing. His heart was not beating. Time felt like slowed down as the horror sank in: his umbilical cord had strangled him.
The volunteers performed CPR on the infant and, six minutes into the ambulance ride, he finally breathed his first breaths.
“They saved him. Those terrific people saved him,” Mr. Cheng said. “And that was our introduction to the community, right then and there.”
When the initial excitement wound down—and the family had forged life-long bonds with the EMT volunteers—Mr. Cheng found himself back in the East End countryside. But as he sifted through his detail-oriented landscapes, none resonated within him.
[caption id="attachment_49742" align="alignleft" width="300"]
"Untitled," 2008, courtesy Philippe Cheng[/caption]
He reconsidered his approach, and remembered a way of working he once practiced in his old stomping grounds—Manhattan, circa-1978. Instead of shooting literally, he would change the focus in the camera and purposefully blur the image.
It was magic, he said.
“When I first saw those pictures, I knew that’s what I was looking for because it spoke of a place—maybe not a specific place, but it gave you an emotional place, and that’s what I was after,” he said. “For me, it’s about a pacing and putting in place a visual pause, which would engage the viewer, hopefully, and open up another kind of avenue of thought. Maybe not knowing exactly what a place was, or exactly what you’re looking at, would force you to try to identify that, and by that very nature of that process, you’d slow down.”
Hence the title of his newest book, “Still,” a 128-page, 1.5-pound collection of more than 100 of his photographs that will be the topic of conversation during a roundtable discussion on Friday, April 8, at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.
“What strikes me about Philippe’s book is that he addresses the philosophical notion of stillness in all of the images in very diverse ways and with tremendous deftness,” said Museum Director Terrie Sultan, who also wrote a passage in the book and will participate in the upcoming talk alongside fellow contributors Elisabeth Biondi, Jack Lenor Larsen and Edwina von Gal.
Over the course of 15 years, Mr. Cheng canvassed nearly every inch of the Hamptons east of the canal—from Hampton Bays to Montauk, and even Shelter Island. It is impossible to say how many photos he captured along the way, simply because that is not how Mr. Cheng works.
It is about quality, not quantity, he emphasized. And, likewise, it is not the photos that have stories behind them, but the places.
“Each area has its own little ecosystem and you can turn a corner and be presented with a quality of space and light that is unique to that specific area, which may be a mile away from another area that just has a different vibe,” he explained. “It was not so much a special place I gravitated to, it’s more the surprise of places I would come upon.
“In Sag Harbor, there’s little bodies of water that you just wouldn’t expect to be there,” he continued. “Because of the nature of that ecosystem, surrounded by trees, it has its own space and light there, And then you can go toward, say, Mecox or Sagg, and all of a sudden, there’s a more open, spatial quality, which the light interacts differently with—and you’re not so far away, only a mile or two at the most.”
The challenge of a blank canvas—which, in this case, is digital—is the force behind Mr. Cheng’s drive. The result is both a creative and emotional outlet.
“It’s a means for me to express my feelings and realize my vision with intention and also with mystery, that things happen that are unexpected,” he said. “I think by taking away the notion that you can define something, it opens up another part of yourself because you’re searching for meaning. The reality is, we live in a culture right now where we feel this need to define something. By the very nature of changing and shifting the focus plains, it makes you to stop for a moment and say, ‘What is that?’”
The original concept behind “Still,” inspired by blurring the posters he saw in Manhattan with his camera, is still a work-in-progress, Mr. Cheng said. “It was just a self project—an uncompleted self project, but it will be one day in my life,” the 55-year-old said.
One of five children, Mr. Cheng—whose father is Chinese and mother is French-Canadian—grew up in Manhattan, but he never visited the East End until his adult life. He first picked up a camera at age 16 when he realized he couldn’t paint.
“I don’t have a hand like Bastienne. You can put a blank piece of paper in front of her and a crayon and a pencil, and she’ll come back to you with a little masterpiece in three minutes,” he said. “Give me a crayon and a piece of paper, I’ll come back with a few lines. I don’t have the hand.”
He did not devote his full attention to photography until what he calls his “mid-life crisis.” The medium had always resonated with him, he said, even from a young age.
“Basically, I was a shy person,” he said. “I still am to a certain extent, and having a camera allows you both to be shy and inquisitive at the same time. It allows you an entrée into the world that you normally could not have.”
When he speaks, Mr. Cheng is thoughtful, pausing often to select the right words. It is no wonder he is a fan of poet E.E. Cummings—particularly his poem, “Since Feeling is First.”
“His poetry is very influential for me, just in terms of my life,” Mr. Cheng said. “The first line of that poem, this is very much what the body of my work is about, in the end. It does matter what you write and how you write, but if it has no meaning, then it’s empty. It is the same for photography. For me, this poem has always stayed with me because the feeling comes first and then everything unfolds from there. For me.”
Philippe Cheng will join Elisabeth Biondi, Jack Lenor Larsen, Terrie Sultan and Edwina von Gal for a discussion on his book, “Still,” on Friday, April 8, at 6 p.m. at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill. Admission is $10 and free for students, children and members. For more information, call (631) 283-2118, or visit parrishart.org.
