直到摄影师欢岛决定把这些影像（已经在她的晦暗的档案里堆叠已久）做成展览，她才注意到这些快照背后并没有一个持之以恒的目的，也许除了她一直感受到想要纪录身边人的冲动外。

但她确实听到了画面之下的低语：「给我一分钟」。

这听来像是摄影师在滑头地安慰着不耐烦的模特，正如它听起来像护士一边安慰大哭的小孩，一边举起她恶毒的针筒时会说的话：「乖，乖，一下就好！」但是针筒已经上弹，快门已被按下，药剂进入身体，影像显现出来。相机扎得正如针一样刺痛。然后我们还剩下——被固化的身体和被捕捉的灵魂。

而欢岛的技术要好得多。她不花你太久时间，实际上她只要一分钟——这就搞定了。一次打针将长时的痛苦削弱为快速的一蛰。一张快照也是如此神奇。冗长取景、构图的大画幅摄影请退场，这些冗长的手术竟尝试将活人重新发明。一张快照使还未做准备的被摄者无法摆好姿势，无法「使自己提前变成影像」[1]；快照也使摄影师闪逝、纷杂的情绪无法详尽挑明——快照阻止他们二者尝试成为他们所不是的，从而打开一个二者互相观察、交流的闪逝场域。

十年之后，观看这些已成影像的瞬间，「给我一分钟」听来更像是对无可避免地流逝的时间和记忆的乞求。一张快照在时间洪流中以针尖般细脚茕茕孑立，永远也保不住整段故事。快照的二维性使其无法展开而成为更多，正如一封只能装入薄信短笺的信封。在《Xin，2012夏，北京》（图 1）中，摄影师和被摄者谁都无法回忆起具体的拍照地点在何处。而图中女子倚身凭阑望去，身体如桥，但连不通暗室与明窗，跨不越从前和未来。她在往时间、空间的哪一个向量遥望？一张单薄的相纸就是无法靠自身站起。这六十张欢岛创作的瞬间，违抗她的原本意愿，无法引领她追忆逝去的时光，而是营造了以一个充满镜子和迷宫的房间，在其中记忆反射、弹回、复制、走远，最终消失蜕化为仅仅图像而已。

「给我一分钟」也是一声温柔的歉意，在这里延误登场。欢岛开始意识到她从未真正向她的被摄者开口要出「一分钟」的时间。她只是在脑中听到这个声音，随后在图像上追溯到了这时间的跨度。现在从这些时间切片的印相如水般的表面看去，一个幽灵正在升起。那不是他者，却正是欢岛本人。当她拿着那针筒时，她从没料到它头尾两端都是针头。她一直都是这些影像缄默的主体；同时是蒙面的罪犯和乔装的受害者；是舞厅中央的镜子球，在旋转中引领、折射着随她跳舞的人。摄影，在这一扇扇面庞的镜像中架构起自观空间，终于成为一场自我治愈的尝试。在最后，「给我一分钟」这声低语又投射向观众，静默发问：「给我你生命中的一分钟时间，让我携你进入这自我记忆的迷宫。你照见的是他们、你自己，还是我？」

[1] 罗兰·巴特（Roland Barthes），《明室》（Camera Lucida），赵克非/译，中国人民大学出版社，2011。

Needle of Love

Jiamu Wu, curator

It was not until photographer Joy Island decided to put up a show for these images (that has been stacked up in her shadow archive for years) did she realize there wasn’t much of a consistent purpose to these snapshots. Maybe aside from the fact that she always felt an urge to document those surrounds her.

But she did manage to perceive a silent whisper underneath: “give me one minute.” Now, this sounds like a clever persuasion that a photographer gives to their impatient subject, just as it sounds in a way like something a nurse would say to comfort a crying baby, while holding that wicked syringe: “There, there, this will end in a snap!” But the syringe is loaded and the shutter released, the cure enters the body and formulates an image. The camera bites just like the needle stings. And what we left—a petrified body and a captured soul.

But Joy Island has better skills. She never asks you for long, in fact she only needs one minute—and it’s done. An injection diminishes the lasting suffering into a quick sting. A snapshot is just as magical as that. Away with the tedious framing and composing of large format cameras, those hour-long surgeries go so far as to try to reinvent the living. A snapshot keeps the unprepared subject from posing, from “transform [one]self in advance into an image.”1 It also keeps the fleeting and perplexing feelings that the photographer has from trying to be explicit. It frames the two of them from being what they aren’t, and thus creates a temporal space for mutual observation and conversation.

Ten years later, looking back at these instants created, “give me one minute” sounds more like a pleading for the unavoidably lost time and memory. A snapshot is just standing alone in the river of time with its thin, needle-like legs, never manages to recover the full story. Its two-dimensionality unfolds to be nothing more, just like an envelope that carries nothing more but flimsy letters. In “Xin, Summer 2012, Beijing”(Fig. 1), neither the photographer nor the photographed can remember where exactly it was taken, no matter how hard they tried. But the women in frame leans over the window, her body like a bridge, but not connecting the dark room to the bright opening, not linking the past to the future. Of time and space, which dimension is she looking into? A slice of photo paper just couldn’t stand on its own. These 60 instants that Joy Island creates, against her original intention, don’t guide her through the search of lost time, but rather create a room full of mirrors and labyrinths, where memories reflect, bounce, duplicate, wander off and finally disappear into being merely images.

“Give me one minute” is also a subtle apology, and in this case a delayed one. Joy Island begins to realize she never truly asked her subject matter for “one minute”, but rather, heard the voice in her head, and traced the time span subsequently in the images. And now looking at these instants, a ghost is rising from the watery surface of these lush prints, and that’s nobody but Joy Island herself. When she was holding that syringe, she never thought the needle could be on both sides. She was always the silent subject of these photos, the veiled criminal and the disguised victim, the center mirror ball that in its rotation guides and reflects all of those that dance around. Photography, amongst all these faces of mirrors, constructs a self-scrutinizing space within, finally becoming an attempt at self-healing. In the very end, the silent whisper “give me one minute” projects itself to the audience, asking quietly: “Give me one minute of your life, and let me invite you to this labyrinth of memories. Do you see a reflection on them, yourself or me?”

1. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 10.