Lake of Tears

The Book of Odes, China's earliest collection of poems, both marks the beginning of Chinese civilization and delineates certain core elements of Asian culture. My search for the broad mountains, flowing rivers, ruined walls and ancient paths of The Book of Odes felt much like a mysterious engagement with an absent partner. During the shoot, it was almost as if my emotions and artistic direction were under the influence of some unknown force. When I think back to before I started this project, after several months of textual and geographical research, I was alarmed to find myself falling into the vast artificial construct of annotations and commentaries built by generations of Confucian scholars. With the shadow of such cluttered and factitious interpretations still hanging over the Odes, the meaning of the original text has been misconstrued and concealed, and a distorted, so-called truth has been created. I believe that changing reality and the text, including historical annotations