Acknowledgements and Concerns
I do not believe in any religion, but have a belief in the existence of a God that determines my destiny. I thank him or her!
I would like to express my gratitude to my father Wang Lun, my mother Dong Manni, my grandfather Wang Xizhen, and my grandmother Wu Hongci, whom I love most, for giving me not only my body, but also my soul to love sincerity, kindness and beauty!
I wish to express my appreciation to Mr. Goro Koyama who loves me like a real parent and looks after me at all times!
My affection also to my brothers and sisters as well as their families for caring about me and loving me!
I would like to thank every single person for loving me and my art, and for helping me at difficult times!
Though I cannot list all names here, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who supported me in putting this English edition together, especially the following persons:
My sincere appreciation to my dearest friends Mr. Robert L. Cunningham and his wife Usha, who truly understand my art and my soul. I thank God who brought me to them. My gratitude also to Ms. Theresa M. Gillis, who is my dear friend and fully devotes her time and efforts to support my artistic activities in the United States. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Mr. Robert L. Cunningham and Ms. Theresa M. Gillis for their tremendous contribution to the successful realization of this publishing project. Mr. Yuji Oda gave me full support, not only financially but also spiritually, while creating new works in 2004 that were included in this book. I am most appreciative of the friendship and affection he provided me.
I must also acknowledge with thanks my friends at Mt. Huangshan as well as my assistants who have been supporting my work over the last thirty years.
In particular, I would like to convey my gratefulness to Mr. Robert B. Abrams. I met him sixteen years ago at the Tokyo International BookExpo. He appreciated my work at first sight and invited me to New York to launch a big plan for my book. However, it fell through at that time, due to many reasons.
Sixteen years have passed since then and now his plan has finally been realized. I am strongly moved by his keen eyes and passion for my work, for which I cannot express my gratitude enough. My deep appreciation as well to superb works offered by his wonderful colleague, Ms. Susan Costello, Mr. David Fabricant, Ms. Julietta Cheung, Ms. Louise Kurtz, to name a few.
Finally, I wish to extend my profound gratitude to Mr. Seigo Matsuoka, Mr. Wu Hung, and Mr. Damian Harper, who contributed their wonderful writings to this book.
Last of all, I would like to take this opportunity to raise my voice. I am deeply concerned about the future of humankind. There are too many concerns to list here, but one thing I would like to point out is the fact that film itself may disappear from the market as a consequence of the abuse of digital technology. The nature of digital recording is entirely different from that of film recording. While films can record facts, digital data can be readily altered or fabricated. True impressions and moving shock that images rendered by film can offer to people cannot be achieved by digital images. Digitally recorded facts (data) would not be evidence for verifying history in the future. If there are no more historical records in film, the 21st Century will be lacking in historical evidence. It is a perilous situation!!
(Most of photographs in this book were shot using Kodak Technical Pan Film. However, this film went out of production this spring.)
Translated by Yukie Takada |
