Shadow-play snapshots tease at the psychology of borders

By Victoria Gail-White
Advertiser Art Critic

•	'A Dot and A Line: A New Project by Gaye Chan' Through Sept. 7 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays Graphic Arts Gallery Honolulu Academy of Arts, 532-8701

Shadows are connected to everything from science to Satan. In "A Dot and a Line," the shadows lurk in 32 pairs of found amateur photographs mounted on blackened open folio pages from an old atlas.

This new project/installation is a collaboration of Gaye Chan and Nandita Sharma. Chan collected about 60 photographs over the past 12 years from estate sales, friends and through serendipity, each photo including a shadow of the photographer. In the past nine months, Sharma has joined her, contributing an impressive voice to the concepts and the written text for the brochure. Both women are university professors: Chan teaches photography at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa and Sharma is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Colombia in Vancouver.

The title of the show is inspired by a Latin American folk song. In the lyrics, an impoverished individual living in one village looks across a national border at another impoverished person. The only thing separating them and their ability to see each other in their similar situations is "a dot and a line" — the border — that exists only because we collectively believe it does.

In the exhibit, cartography and photography have become equal demons in depriving humans of fluidity of movement and connectivity to other humans. Both represent the reality of serving the ruling class and, writes Sharma, of "colonizing our imagination of land and identity. The power of these imposed boundaries relies on our collective forgetfulness that there are other ways of seeing and being."

In this conceptual tour de force, Chan grids a new topography based on a template of the matched shadows that are placed in the display cases in the center of the room. She arbitrarily connects the people in the photographs — matching the shadows, north to south, of the photographers — and in the process invents her jigsaw geography of digital ink-jet prints. The map locations selected for the templates range from currently contested areas in occupied territories, claimed states and borders between the First and Third Worlds to those that may have existed or may exist in the future. The maps match the corresponding photograph shadow shapes on each side of the room.

"It is really about empathy," says Chan, "and how we align ourselves, or not align ourselves. Very few of us have any say about where the borders are laid — that always changes. The great majority of us see those lines as completely static and fixed and we use them to determine our alliances and whom we work with and work against all through our lives. This project is a reflection of how we come to believe in those alliances and live by them. It doesn't have to be this way. I am hoping that this project will show how arbitrary nations and states come to be and how it has very little relationship to most of humanity."

Chan and Sharma believe that there are different models of reciprocity. Eighty percent of the world is still driven by self-sufficient farming. However, the United States, simultaneously connected and disconnected by state borders, is a dependent nation, as anyone living in a city can tell you. Borders reinforce this archetype.

"Photographers are usually aware of a shadow in the picture," said Chan. "When that photographer becomes aware of the shadow it is a step of awareness of the frame —Êrecognizing your own presence. I am pretty convinced that none of these photographers that took these pictures saw their shadow. There is an innocence about their imaging based on what they focused on (loved ones, babies, vacations, celebrations) and not seeing their presence in the picture." However innocent the photographers may have been, Chan believes there is an educated perspective that society accepts pertaining to when it is proper to take a picture and when it is not. This codified social information molds our memory.

"There is a combination of accidental and arbitrary," said Chan, "and what is completely predetermined. Most pictures from less innocent photographers, that do not include a shadow, are more dangerous because we forget the photographer's presence. We look at the image as truth, as fact. Every picture was made for a reason."

In this display, one photograph is above and one below, each aligned by the shape of the shadow. A random justification of which photo is on top sets a precedent for the unequal terms of the relationships between the shadows of the matched photographers. "The two become mutually constitutive," writes Sharma. "The Self becomes inseparable from Other, so much so that the Othered, even in their resistance, often imitate those who rule over them and leave the necessity of lines unquestioned."

Installing the show in a way that would invert the order of which photo is on top, possibly by a rotating peg, would encourage yet another dialogue based on changing the capricious position of any ruling power. However, the streamlined installation and the small size of the snapshots entice the viewer into recognizing the familiarity and identifying with the subjects. It is only a matter of minutes before you are twisting your head to see who is in the photograph that is upside down. And, at that point, the questions (social, political, cultural, religious) begin to articulate in your head. Chan likes to inspire, or better yet instigate, curiosity. In that position, her shadow is cast over the installation.

We are all interconnected. Photographers cannot completely remove themselves from a picture and cartographers do not see dots and lines if they view the earth from an airplane or spacecraft. "The most significant border crossing," writes Sharma, "is not when we simply step over the line to be part of the other side but when we refuse to acknowledge its very legitimacy."