(All Photos by Zhang Ye)
Because of my involvement in the Racecar Engineering Club in college, I am occasionally invited to a certain type of parties. In these parties, I am almost always the only person who doesn’t have an expertise in Engineering, Physics, Math, Chemistry, or Biology. Most of the time, it will take up almost all my focus just to understand the thesis of people’s project, research etc. Drilling someone for 15 minutes just to understand the thesis of their research, while people are at the party exactly because it is a place to get away from their studies, is not the thing to do in such parties. As a general strategy, hopping from group to group and spying on the inside gossip of Tesla and SpaceX is my way of survival.
I met Zhang Ye at one of the parties. Zhang Ye is a Ph.D student in Electrical Engineering who specializes in circuitry design, a relatively esteemed field of study in the University. But perhaps because of her personality, she was as reserved just as I was unassuming at the party. Our conversation occurred sporadically throughout the night. We exchanged Instagram before she left around 12am.
Our conversation at the party did not revolve around Engineering, but neither did she mention about her fabulous photographs. Perhaps she intentionally reserved her Instagram albums for those who really cared to explore the treasures she has saved for them. It was weeks passed that I reached out to her to get some food at a Vietnamese restaurant near campus. She allowed me to investigate her about the thesis of her project. Throughout the dinner, I learned that before she became a Ph.D candidate in Electrical Engineering, she studied Applied Physics in college.
(9/11 Memorial)
(Manhattan—Staten Island Ferry)
On her Instagram, Zhang Ye divided her photos into two accounts. One of them, @sh.bos.ny, which she dubbed, “photos”, and a private account which she dubbed “stories”. For me, beyond the reason of privacy (an totally valid reason), it is unclear how she decides what photos to put on which account. In combination, her photos spread on a wide spectrum of subjects and genres. Sometimes it will be a group of buildings conveniently aligned in the reflection of a puddle, which apparently is the square pond of the 9/11 memorial. Sometimes it would be a group of tourists lining up in front of the window of the Manhattan–Staten Island ferry, looking far out at the skyline of Manhattan. Sometimes it would be a forest of trees aligned into a collage of green, orange and brown. Sometimes it would be a tourist shot where she leans against a ranch fence in Tennessee, from which her personality seeps through the photo, just a little bit.
(People Under Floor of Glass)
(Window of Williston Library)
But no matter if it is a simple window, or a swirl of people standing beneath a glass floor, Zhang Ye has a sensitivity for how perfect and imperfect geometrical shapes appears in the real world, perhaps due to her background in natural science.
(50th St Subway Station)
Her sensitivity to geometry does not stop at simply observing how geometrical structures frame our perceptions (That is an old art school cliche which doesn’t really say much about anything). From time to time, these geometrical shapes seems to have proposed an parallel context in which ordinary events are grounded. Take “50th St Subway Station” for example, the aggressively zoomed-in guards rails and the suddenly opening up of the stairs creates a tripping and tilting sensation of falling down from the open streets into the confined underground subway. It was as if we are being pulled into the underworld that is the dirty and stained subway network of New York City. An ordinary commute across the city suddenly seems to become an surreal crossing between spaces that inherit different conceptual qualities, and the gateway between these spaces seems to be geometrical in nature.
When we were having dinner, I asked her why she transitioned from Applied Physics to Engineering, she told me: “I figured that I really need to work with something real and tangible.“ At first, I didn’t make much out of her seemingly ordinary manifest. But through her photos, I understand her manifest as her attitude towards the constant recurrence of anomalies.
In mathematics, an anomaly is something to be eradicated to preserve the consistency of a mathematical system. In Applied Physics, the discovery of anomalies comes with great excitement, as the advancement of scientific theories depends on what anomalies can tell us about the insufficiency of the current theory. In Engineering, anomalies are a simple fact of life that can neither be eradicated nor rejoiced. The occurrence of anomalies in a machine or an electrical circuit means the natural world has rejected the human appropriation of its materials, once again.
There is no end in these rejections. You simply have to debug them every day to prevent your car, your phone, your house, our city, from deteriorating. That, the constant raveling and unraveling of things, is the “real and tangible” thing for an Engineer. And there is no use of holding a grudge against anomalies. If you do so, you will soon loose your sane. To choose Engineering as an profession while keeping your sane, you need to be drawn to this “real and tangible” dealing between anomalies and upkeeping.
(The Smoker in Gatlinburg, Tennessee)
Take my favorite photo from Zhang Ye, “The Smoker in Gatlinburg, Tennessee”, for example. In the photo, birds, pedestrians, and the green pillars seemingly gather on the street with no shared purpose. But the smoker squats besides the pillar enjoying his cigarette, and remains undisturbed by this hastily gathering of things. Such a sight would have had no particular meaning due to its lack of, or overabundance, of contexts. But it was because of the architect who displaced the green pillars in such symmetrical spacing, and the person, who found the structural relations of things, that the sidewalk, the smoker, the pedestrian, and the bird, seems to become pleasant anomalies to each other. While the geometrical structure of the pillars seems to have asserted an permanent quality as they protrude all the way to the foreground of the image, the occurrences of random anomalies of human and nature also seems to be an constant as the structure of the space is grounded on the smoker who uses the space.
May 4, 2023
Kado
Photo by Zhang Ye// @sh.bos.ny, @yeahzhang
I decided to write this entry about a week ago when I was looking for feature photos for my book review series, “Crime and Punishment and the Tragedy of Cancel Culture“. Upon my request, Zhang Ye generously granted me usage to her photos. The more I look at her photo, the more I realized how much they deserve an independent entry. Over the course of this week, I collaborated with Zhang Ye to write this entry. Although the week collided with her final exams and academic duties, Zhang Ye spared her time with me and made this entry possible. In the process of writing this entry, I have taken up the privilege of naming a few untitled photos for the convenience of communication. In the process of naming, I tried to nominate titles that are as plain and as matter of fact as possible to avoid attaching external connotations to these photos. These titles should be regarded as ad-hock nominals adapted only for the sake of communication.
The publication of this article has received full approval from Ye.
Really interesting post! And I love her photos too