show-off

The piece: a series of three photographs shot in one room. In the first photograph of this tryptich, a woman with dark brown hair and glasses sits on a bed, only the head of which is visible behind her. The center photograph presents another angle of the same room. A dresser is visible as well as a doorway, through which a portion of a darkened room can be seen. Through the doorway, a portrait of a mother and daughter is just visible. The last photograph depicts the same scene as the first, but the woman in this photo, although she looks similar, has gray hair. She is the first woman's mother. The three photographs are joined into one long, flattened panoramic shot by the pink paisley wallpaper which forms a background for the entire scene.

Photographer Michael Wang '03 says that photographs form "a visual language that we're constantly being bombarded with." What is the language of Wang's photographs?

"There're about surfaces. They're about the way we invent surfaces and how that's in a sense inventing ourselves. In a way, it's hard to say there's anything more than surfaces, that kind of manifestation of fantasy in the surface. "The idea of fantasy is a recurring theme in Wang's work. In another photograph, a young girl in a ballerina dress sits on a counter in the middle of a kitchen. "It's about fantasy," says Wang "the fantasy of femininity."

Color, dress, and d'cor--the human manipulation of the surface--all form important parts of Wang's photographs. Wang does not limit his exploration soley to surfaces, and his photographs also investigate the relationship between the photographer and his subject. "Everyone in the photos is someone I know, which isn't necessarily apparent in the photographs. There's a certain kind of distance combined with familiarity."

These thoughts and patterns--the construction of reality to enact a fantasy, the conception of home, the synthesis of art historical references within the context of the present--are evident through all of Wang's work. One might say that his work reflects the archetypal codes of all of our lives.

Art at Harvard for the past two years has been overall a rewarding experience for Wang. "I've worked with Boris Mikhailov. I'm working with Carrie Mae Weems. There're all these different perspectives, all these brilliant people. To be able to work with people like this, to think how they're thinking, is an incredible experience."

There are drawbacks, though, to studying art at Harvard. "VES is a small department compared to some at Harvard. That can sometimes be a little bit limiting because there's not a huge array of student work to look at and bounce off of," Wang comments. But the small size of the department also has its advantages. "It's really nice that there's an intellectual focus here which sometimes gets lost."

"I really love photographs. I really love how they function culturally as a part of that visual language." Wang has taken the language of photography and made it his own, a language of face, feeling, and fantasy.