The title Behind the Image signifies an innovative concept and its continuation throughout Liu Yao-bin’s work over these years as a photographer. It suggests the misconception of visibility in the core of photography, as a confirmatory experience to a present viewer, the authenticity of image does not suggest representation of reality but the way which the photographer interferes in the world of reality. The title also suggests an invisibility, which responds to the reoccurring motif of female as maternity and primitive memory, and thus implies the existential truth of a desire behind the symbol of female body through a sophisticated glimpse. The invisibility of image refers to total transparency of every image at the presence of its subject, it echoes the photographer’s interference to meaning, although coming across a representation, the contemporary digital images demonstrate a pastiche of the mind of its creator.

The representative characteristic in Liu’s photographic work surpasses the visible reality, presenting his grasp in image themes with an invisible posture; as a response to contemporary art feature and its irreversible destiny, these works stand on the edge between producing and feigning. The 3 series In Bloom, Not a Flower, Bóng-tshī and Zhao Di, Hiding is no Equal to Forgetting are selected on display in this exhibition, for a series of work contains the developing context of how the artist created a connection between art pieces and himself in the images. The gaze upon affection and gender has always been the core essence of exploration in his works. Rather than merely an aesthetic judgement in the perspective of direct phenomenon of sex and desire, his photography skillfully applies a visual language with profound cultural meanings in his allegories of image; it wanders between the realm of intuition and of reality, in it exists a dual-affection of a subconscious subject with desire on female as a kind of maternal attachment and dependance, albeit dreamy. As the photographer wrote in his artist statement: he wishes to elaborate his own ideas and concepts via a language of images… for one must wear his mask and cope with his workplace in the world of reality, while seeing is not equivalent to understanding.

As Roland Barthes proclaimed, vision is the most mysterious among all senses, it is on the other side of the spectrum from knowledge, because magic lies within vision. Liu transferred from the career path of being a professional pharmacist to the role of a photographer, and having been through losing his mother he begun to ponder the sexual attachment of maternity. He reviews his personal history and memory through creative process, and thus constructs this kind of Lacanian lack of his own interpretation in the world of photography. Hence he constructed a paradox of seeing and being seen through the seemingly in sight character of image, and thus demonstrates that the moment a viewer sees an art piece, they see their inner truth.

I see value in Liu’s photography, not only for his representative ability in emotional expressions, but also for his capability to see things via a viewfinder, allowing viewers to connect with the truth of his memory and the perception of seeing through his image creation while being aware of the invisibility character of photography himself.