The Passage of Phenomena in Scott Cai’s Vinegar Lane

Nina Dyer

Wandering cul-de-sacs or venturing beyond the urban periphery, Tāmaki Makaurau-based photographer Scott Cai has been actively refining his craft – suspending quiet moments that might otherwise go unnoticed. Whether it’s the vivid, primary colours that glow with a subtle aura on a blue sky day, or the soft outlines of tropical plants pressed against a hazy window; Cai isolates commonplace details for his viewer to see in a new light. His work encourages a shift in attention – transporting the viewer into a mode of observation. Momentarily lifted from the noise of modern living, the artist reveals the beauty of vernacular compositions through his heightened perspective.

The distinctive aesthetic Cai has developed conveys a gentle sense of unreality captured in the familiar. Bright light, which usually overwhelms the human retina, or the shadows that dull an object’s true tones, are expertly handled by the artist. The radiance of white road markings against flat asphalt can be gleaned by the naked eye, though rarely appreciated outside of their utilitarian function. In one image a vertical handrail casts an orderly shadow, drawing our attention to the beginnings of moss creeping organically over the hard lines of a building. This interplay of contrasting elements – fluid and geometric, light and shadow, static and vibrant – is what resonates beyond the picture frame; triggering an uncanny recognition.

Scott Cai’s wanderings are informed by Vipassanā, a discipline of Buddhist meditation often translated as “insight” or “clear seeing”. Attuned to the deeper world of meaning contained within phenomena - here, the minutiae of suburban streets – Cai’s chosen medium of digital photography is both unexpected and wholly fitting. Unexpected in that the lush textures and crisp tones of each image feel worlds away from ancient practices of spiritual reflection. Fitting, in the sense that Vipassanā encourages the individual to focus on direct perceptual experience, rather than a world framed by rational thought and logic. By isolating immediate visual experiences through his lens, Cai employs the camera as a conduit for ‘cultivat[ing] a way of living that is more attuned to the present, independent of external events…the world is constantly offering us a full spectrum of experiences’ of a more intuitive nature. Moreover, the immutability of photography – its unprecedented ability to freeze the perceptual flow of phenomena - enhances our appreciation of the very transience of nature. In Buddhist terms, this aligns with the understanding that all Saṅkhāra, conditioned things, are impermanent and fleeting.

Deepening this attention to nuance and transience is a new moving image work Princes St conceived as a still photograph opened up to subtle motion. Though it first appears as another fixed composition, the soft shadows of two tree trunks sway almost imperceptibly with the wind, their outlines swelling and deflating as though respiring against a red brick wall. Gradually, less minute movements emerge: birds swoop across the distant sky, the glint of their white flanks catching the eye of the camera. The artist’s unchanging framing invites the viewer to share in the specious present, the perceptual window that contains the experiential ‘now’. This term was first used in 1882 by psychologist E. Robert Kelly, who argued that the present is not experienced as a static instant, rather it encompasses the immediate past as well. To illustrate this, he described how the changing positions of a meteor appear to the observer as a continuous movement, rather than discrete moments. In the same year, Étienne-Jules Marey developed the chronophotographic ‘gun’, a camera that captured sequential movements – famously of horses and birds – by taking several quick exposures on a single photographic surface. Now, more than a century later, the subjective experience of time and perception remains a source of fascination. In his moving image work, Cai disregards film techniques such as compositional shifts, cuts, sequences or narrative, instead allowing for the quiet observation of simple moments to be shared, unimpeded. In doing so, he ‘removes some of the imaginative possibilities that still images provide’, honing in on the direct experience of time passing.

Nina Dyer’s essay was first published to accompany the exhibition Vinegar Lane by Scott Cai at Sanderson Contemporary. The exhibition runs from 1-27 April.