Silver gelatin print on PH-neutral paper made by artist, 105 x 76 cm /76 x 56 cm
“On canvas or on large sheets of hand-emulsioned Velin d’Arches paper, Tibetans look at us. Alone or in twos and threes, then in groups where children freeze in front of a large format field camera, the intensity of their gazes captivates us and makes desire and the impossibility of speech both visible and painful. Indeed it is the word “speak”, written on the negative, in the «drawn portraits» series, which completes one of the faces that have been blurred by painting.”
Christian Caujolle, 2003
“In contradistinction to other ethnographically inspired photographs, we have a powerful example of the interrogative voice in black and white photography in Gao Bo, ‘Sketch Portrait’, (1996) in ‘Talk’. This image incorporates smearing and handwriting-graffiti or note style, which de-presences the image, re-presenting it as a source of difficulty (it is important that the‘deformation’ occurs on the level of the image and not in the world of the image, for these temporal effects to come into play). Indeed such a deformation may combine the tenses (past, present and future) as when we perceive a pre-existing problem, its presence and the possibility of a solution (or the continuation of the problem state into future…). Oracular. The status of a question posed. ”
Black & White Photography in China – the Rhetoric of Time as a Definition of Genre.
Dr. Peter Nesteruk 2010