Rui Wang’s ambient take on holiday photography is about moments just out of reach

Based in Tampa, Florida, Rui Wang is a China born cross-disciplinary artist exploring memory through analog photography – particularly, those memories that escape from us, whispering away into obscurity. In his new book Not Everything Was Seen, the “almost seen is an invitation” – when an image holds back, the viewer steps forward. “A reflection on glass, a figure behind a curtain, dusk light softening a street corner — these are places where presence is felt without being fully declared,” says Rui. “I am interested in that gentle participation, the way a picture can become a mirror rather than a statement.”

Rui’s photographing in an ambient fashion acknowledges scenes without claiming them, photographing as an eternal outsider. In this photobook, Rui shoots typical holiday scenes as if he’s a ghost just passing through, observing events like Bruno Ganz’s guardian angel in Wings Of Desire. Growing up in Taiyuan, China, where traditional painting and calligraphy taught Rui how to care about line, rhythm and negative space, Rui’s photography follows the same kind of rare contemplation that allows his film images to create a low humming narrative. “I want the images to breathe so viewers can meet them halfway. The almost visible matters because life often happens at the edges — in the pause, the afterglow, the trace that remains,” says Rui.

An appreciation for design feeds Rui’s creative endeavours in photography – when he photographs, he sees the structures he uses in his design work return in traces of sequencing and pacing through recurring motifs and measured distance between images. When a story needs structure, he designs a system so that it reads clearly – so in photography, he does the same, but instead of an objective structure, he feeds feeling into his photos to accommodate the viewer through their own sabbatical through this atmospheric landscape. “I wanted to treat ‘holiday photos’ not as souvenirs, but as a way of noticing. By ‘holiday photos’, I mean the casual, everyday snapshots that live close to life: the quiet moments between places, the ordinary details we usually pass by,” says Rui.

Working with a Contax G2 and the Mamiya 6 MF, the former allows quick reactions to small gestures whereas the latter allows Rui to slow down and construct careful framing. Analog inherently changes the pacing that instant film cameras would speed up, allowing Rui to meter purposefully and pay closer attention to light and timing. The result are flickers of moments that perhaps the subjects within the photos aren’t even aware of – some of the most striking photographs are spots of light on the ground, panoramas that connect several people, and scanlines in a CRT television – naked to the human eye, but retrievable by the camera and a patient, outside perspective.