The Largeness and Smallness of the World

The largeness of the world could allow people to go anywhere with their cameras. In measuring the world, we discover something beyond our imagination, and ultimately, understand the essence of everything is changing. In other words, the most significant glamor of understanding world is its various transitional states. Collecting the images from the world and coming back to the very first origin, we suddenly found that the so-called familiar world become so unfamiliar. That is because we have different perspective and then there is a brand-new coordinate system.

After hiking and discovering, we have to redefine ourselves. The world turns to be so small. Strangers living thousands miles away become strikingly familiar through lens. Although westerners and easterners have quite different image expressions, the image perceptions are similar actually.

Using the image language, the works "TRANSITIONS" by 33 students and teachers in Beijing Film Academy and Department of Art in University of Minnesota not only try to discover the breadth of realistic change, but also explore the depth of the transition.

Zhu Jiong

Art Director of the Transitions Chinese-American image communication program

Teacher of Beijing Film Academy visiting US in 2012