Li Zhaohui questionnaire conducted by Maija Tammi.

Can you tell about the first time when you saw an autopsy / an
open surgery?

I’ve never seen an autopsy, except on the film. Open surgery, I just
attended once. It was a caesarean operation. At the moment when a
woman's stomach was cut open by a knife, I felt nervous and scared.
Finally saw a new life pulled out from the blood by doctors, I was
shocked.

A surgeon does not quail in front of an open surgery wound as
disgust can be learned and unlearned. How did you get use to
seeing human organs and what made you want to start to pho-
tograph them?

Usually, I finish my shoot in the pathology department of hospitals.
Generally, after an operation, the excised organs need to have fur-
ther examination in the pathology department, and at that time,
there are maybe a few hours for me to take photos.
I majored in biology, so I have seen a lot of specimens, but until now
I have not actually overcome the discomfortableness when I see
those organs, especially when I need to use my hands to place them.
My wife has been my assistant once, and she felt so disgusted when
she looked at them, so she is an unqualified assistant. She does not
even want to see my work at present.
Fortunately, I have a friend who is working at pathology, he helped
me to deal with the organs for most of times.
The uncomfortableness is also one of the reasons that I decided to
photograph them, not the major reason of course.

You chose black and white film and smooth and soft light to
protect the viewers. What do you want to protect them from?

The scenes of the organs are very bloody, and can bring people
with a strong sense of stimulation. However, this kind of sense is
not what I want. What I want is reason, a rational thinking about a
kind of vital ultimate.

Why the ruler?
Actually, at first, ruler is just a habit for a scientist. However, when
I tried to shoot the first photo with the ruler under the organ, it be-
came a huge decision for my work. It is very important, and it even
has the same importance as the specimen itself. Ruler is the sign of
reason, and it means the standard of god, it is not only used as an
instrument to measure the organ but also utilized to measure all of
life.

Umberto Eco asks in The name of the Rose (1986) why does
beauty stop at the skin. When we know everything that is under
the skin, the intestines, blood and mucus, how can we still want
to embrace this sack that contains all of it. Has your perception
on the human insides changed since you started the project?

Eco is right.
But, when I separate the organ from a human body, I have already
built a new skin. Everyone knows his body not only on the surface;
we all know that we have stomach, liver, lung or intestines. We are
very familial with them conceptually, and we do not have any neg-
ative impression. We just never witness them by our eyes, and be-
cause of that, we even have a little curiosity about them and about
their real appearance. Merely, those associations about blood and
death hinder the appreciation about them. Thus, just because of
that, one can see the importance about the way of my shoot.

Your photographs can be seen as abject. Abject, in Julia Kriste-
va’s writings, is something secreted or jettisoned that questions
the boundaries of the bodily self and identity, and thus disturbs.
When you’re taking a photo of a human part, how do you see it
in relation to a body?

In most cases, these organs will not make me associate any par-
ticular person. However, in a sense, it is truly related to a certain
person. I did not shoot the organs which I don’t know how long they
have been sunk in formalin and where they came from. The organs
that I photographed is died, but it’s parent body,the specific person,
is alive. This contrast between life and death is my deliberately de-
cision.

You’re interested in the question of what is ‘soul’; how do you
see it, are we a body or do we have a body?

This problem is actually beyond human’s limitation.
The answers of the question which was made by the sages are just
all kinds of contradicted guesses and hypothesis.
If I have to answer this question, I think it is that “we have this body
rather than we are the body”.

Max Aquilera-Hellweg (1997), Raphaël Dallaporta (2010), and
myself (2011–2013) have photographed human organs and
tissues. Aquilera-Hellweg writes in his book that he made the
photographs in the hope of making people “less afraid of the
body, medicine, and, ultimately, less afraid of death”. Dallaporta
told me in an interview that what he hopes to convey with his
work is to develop melancholy. And by melancholy he means
not depression but a state where one confronts his or hers own
mortality and the beautiful intensity of life. What is your rea-
son?

I never tried to convey any idea through this work, more than that,
it is place on my doubt and thinking about life and death. These
doubt and thinking accompanied me since my college, and I have
not found the answer until now.
If I have to “convey” something, that must be “convey the doubt”.

Sometimes you have combined your work with news, for ex-
ample about a peasant cutting-off a sick leg because he had no
money for the surgical operation. What do you want to convey
with the pieces of news?

That is just a natural association from me as a social man, not the
content that I want to convey to the viewers.

Maija Tammi is a Finnish artist and researcher. She is currently making a practice-based
doctoral thesis at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

李朝晖访谈,提问者:Maija Tammi

你能讲讲关于当你第一次看到解剖/手术?

我从来没有看过真实的人体解剖,除了在电影上。手
术倒是观摩过一次,那是一场剖腹产手术,一个女人
的肚子被刀切开的瞬间,我感觉到紧张和害怕,最后
目睹一个新的生命被医生从血泊中拽出,我是被震住
了。
外科医生不会对手术伤感到不适,这是可以学到的。
你是怎么对观看人体器官感到适应的,是什么让你想开
始拍摄它们?
大多数时候,我都是在医院的病理科完成我的拍摄,
一般来说,手术结束后,切除的器官要送到病理科做
进一步的病理检查,这期间大慨有几个小时的时间可
以让我拍摄。
我是学生物学的,标本见过很多,不过,直到现在,
我也没有完全克服看到那些器官时的不适,特别是用
手去摆放它们的时候。我的太太曾经做过一次我的助
手,她看到它们会感觉到十分厌恶,所以她是不合格
的助手,她现在甚至不愿意去看我的作品。好在我有
一个从事病理学工作的朋友,大多数标本的摆放都是
他帮我实现的。
这种不适也是我决定拍摄它们的原因之一,尽管它不
是最重要的原因。

你选择了黑白胶片和平滑柔和的光线,以保护观众。你
想保护他们什么?

器官的现场是很血腥的,给人很强烈的刺激,但这种
感官刺激不是我想要的。我想要的是理性,一种对生
命的终极问题的理性思考。

为什么那把尺子?
尺子最早是一种习惯,作为一个科学工作者的习惯。
不过,当我尝试着拍下第一张带有尺子的标本照片
后,它就成为我这个作品的一个重要决定。十分重
要,具有了和标本本身同样重要的地位。尺子意味理
性,尺子意味上帝的标准,它不仅用于测量器官的大
小,同时用于衡量生命的一切。

Umberto Eco在《以玫瑰的名义》(1986) 中问道:为
什么美丽停在表面。当我们知道皮肤下的是肠道、血
液和粘液,我们如何还想拥抱这个皮囊。在你开始这
个项目后,你对人体组织器官的感觉是否有变化?

Eco说的很对。
不过,当我把那些器官从人体中分离出来的时候,我
已经建立起了新的外表。我们每个人对人体的认识并
不仅仅是在外表的,我们都知道我们有胃、肝、肺、
肠,我们在概念上非常熟悉它们,对它们也没有什么
负面的印象,只是我们都没有亲眼见过它们,所以我
们甚至还有一点点好奇心,想看看它们到底是什么样
子。只是,那些血腥和死亡的联想障碍了我们对它们
的欣赏。所以,仅从这一点,也可以看出我的拍摄方
式的重要性。

你的照片可以被看作是悲凉的。在Julia Kristeva的著
作中,悲凉是由身体和身份的边界问题引起的反应,对人
造成困扰。当你拍摄人体的一部分,你如何看待它与身
体的关系?

大多数情况下,这些器官不会让我联想到具体的某个
人。不过,在某种意义上,它又确实和某个具体的人
相关。我没有拍摄那些在福尔马林里不知道待了多少
年的来路不明的器官。我拍的这个器官是死的,可它
的母体,也就是那个具体的人,还活着。这种生和死
的对照是我刻意的选择。

你对什么是“灵魂” 的问题 感兴趣,你如何看待它?
我们是我们身体,还是,我们拥有一个身体?

这个问题其实已经突破了人的极限。
先哲们对这个问题的解答只是各种互相矛盾的猜测和
假说。
如果非要我回答,我认为“我们拥有这个肉体,而不
是我们就是这个肉体”。

Max Aquilera-Hellweg(1997), Raphaël Dallapor-
ta(2010),和我(2011 - 2013)都拍摄过人体器官和组
织。Aquilera-Hellweg在他的书中写道,他的照片,
希望让人们“少害怕身体,医学,最终,不害怕死亡”
。Dallaporta在接受采访时告诉我说,他希望通过他的
作品传达一种忧郁,并由此使他们不会因为必然到来
的死亡而忧郁以及感知到生命的美丽。你的理由是什
么?

我没有试图通过这个作品来传达任何观念,更多的,
它寄托了我自己对生命和死亡的疑问和思考。这种疑
问和思考从我在大学学习生物学开始,一直延续到现
在,最终也没能找到答案。
若说要传达,那便是传达这个疑问。

有时候你把你的作品与某些社会新闻相联系,例如一个
农民因为没有钱而自己在家给自己做截肢手术。你想
通过这种联系传达什么信息?

这不过是我作为一个社会人的自然联想罢了,并非我
想传达给观者的内容。

关于访谈者:Maija Tammi是一个芬兰艺术家和研究者。她目前正
在阿尔托大学艺术设计和建筑学院,做一项基于实践的博士论文。