A simple enough sounding directive—“Smile! Say Cheese!”—lets us know a photograph is about to be taken. Or one of my eternal favorites, which seems tailormade to lead to an existential crisis, captured in snapshot form:“Look natural!” How can we direct a photograph or capture someone ‘naturally’ when they are faced with a camera? How do we record the relationships that shape us?
For photographer Zihan Wei, the answer lives in the name of her project, I Did Nothing Other Than to Tell Them to Smile. “Hot soup on the table, cotton clothes, a television set that never turns off. These are the things that make up a traditional Chinese family,” she says, listing out some of the tableaux we see in her work. In her images, Zihan’s parents peer out from such intimate, everyday scenes; gazing out from behind beauty masks, lying back in bed, clasping a necklace shut.
Her initial snapshot aesthetic came from family albums but putting her own spin on it meant reaching beyond the “memorable” occasions that are usually focused on. “Many things influence me, including literature, advertising leaflets, plumbing ads, and fashion.” The resulting images have a loose feel. “I say ‘cheese’ when I shoot. It’s similar to the quick snapshot technique I used as a child in tourist spots, like taking a souvenir photo in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing for 5 yuan. I don’t overthink during the shoot.”
As an only child born under China’s one-child policy, Zihan and her parents had to learn the particular intimacy of living as a small family together. “My father was the youngest of four brothers, and my mother was the youngest of five children and the only daughter among them,” she explains. “The influence of collectivism brought conventions and habits into their lives: ‘Don’t be different from others.’ Throughout my upbringing, my parents and I faced a new kind of intimacy together, without any prior experience to refer to. We tried to understand each other and become friends.”
For Zihan, introducing photography into the relationship was an obvious path forward. “Photography is a natural behavior for me, like eating or walking,” she explains. “Without exploiting any of my subjects in the photos, I see them as visual language within a ‘creative project.’ Intimate relationships are similar; mutual gazing can make us closer than words.”
Starting with pranks and role-playing, she convinced her parents to take part in her work under the guise of making “wedding photos.” Having none to start with, they acquiesced and a new dynamic developed, assisted by the camera. Interspersed throughout the project are older family snapshots, enlivened by the impish cut-out of a small child—sliding into a ball pit or blowing out candles. She explains that cutting herself out of the pictures referenced her role as the family photographer. “I don’t appear in the frame, so I also wanted to make myself absent in the referenced old photos.”
There is a sense of play and complicity that feels leveled all around—not just at the camera but acted out equally by its operator and her subjects. “During the shooting process, a kind of intimate yet awkward relationship arose between us,” says Zihan. “Gradually, we became accustomed to this mode of photography, and it no longer felt strange, nor did we need to explain too much. I now believe that in an intimate relationship, it is better not to overemphasize mutual understanding.”
Sometimes it is in the basic act of looking that we learn so much. Or as the photographer notes, “Simply watching what one another is doing is the best kind of relationship.”