We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Siz Wang. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Siz below.

Siz, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?

I think I was most misunderstood whenever I entered the public space as a photographer. I didn’t expect that having the identity of a photographer would put me in a vulnerable position, subject to the general conception that photography is a service. Plus, a young woman like me couldn’t possibly be experienced.

Perhaps some of those people have been subconsciously misled by the fact that I am based in NYC. The urban context makes people prone to assume that I would always be interested in taking portraits of people. In their opinion, I shall feel my skills are honored and recognized when such a photoshoot request is made, whether personal or commercial, paid or not. However, I am a street and fine art photographer who doesn’t focus on exploring the details of human bodies.

If I were ever to turn down somebody’s request coming with praise like, “You are such a talented photographer! I really admire your composition! Can you just take a few photos of me, over there, with your camera and email them to me? It wouldn’t take you much time.” I would then be criticized for being arrogant and petty.

However, this kind of scenario only occasionally wounds me because it makes me feel like I have been objectified and perceived as a useful tool. The more serious misunderstandings usually come from fellow photographers or some photography communities.

Though I have to say that my experience is very individualistic, it might not accurately reflect the photography or art community in general.

The most common skepticism happens when other photographers first laid their eyes on me. “You are also a photographer?” “It’s rare to see a girl carrying such a professional camera.” “Isn’t it too heavy for you to pick such a gear?” “Can I have a look at what lens you are using? I’m using…” Those are the classic first questions photographers tend to ask me, a round-face, skinny Asian girl who always appears younger than she actually is.

Most of those photographers are very warm-hearted. They often assume that I would have a hidden problem with photography, especially in figuring out ISO and shutter speed, so they often proactively offer me a free equipment tutorial that I never asked for.

By the time those photography veterans see my works or portfolio, their attitudes often become much less friendly. If they were commercial portrait photographers, they would tell me that my approach was amateur. I should learn to photograph people close-up, right in front of their faces. The photos that I took from a distance do not have commercial value and hence don’t promise career success. If they are photographers who perceive themselves as artists instead of just photographers, they would feel disgusted to identify themselves with me because my photos are too pretty and readable. In summary, commercial photographers often disapprove of me for being too abstract, while fine arts photographers usually reject me for not being abstract enough.

In these painful conversations, I gained some clarity about my own attitude towards photography. For me, photography is a practice of creative observations. I like photography just as others enjoy their meals. It is just an enjoyable way of life. The reason I often feel misplaced and wounded when facing those professional judgments is that I do not possess an ambition of acquiring social status by being a photographer, while others assume I do.

Siz, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I guess the most concise way to describe this is I am a storyteller who practices both visual and literary storytelling. To elaborate on this self-introduction In more tangible terms, I am a writer, photographer, and storyboard artist who has an interdisciplinary education background in animation, game design, and creative writing. Right now, I mostly keep photography as a personal practice. I enjoy exploring how concepts in romanticism oil paintings and traditional Chinese ink-wash painting may be transferable to developing a new and unique perspective in photography. That experimental interest is relatively niche and personal, so I do not plan to make a living with photography, considering I would like to retain my autonomy, boundaries, and freedom in this practice.

When it comes to living, I most often work as a writer. In the past five years, I professionally write in both English and Simplified Chinese, covering both non-fiction and fiction, ranging from investigative media, game narrative design, and original work of literature. In other words, I am practically a generalist writer who can not write a single line of poem.

Currently, I am working on a fantasy detective novel, Wandering Mountain, and a visual novel, Aily & Anna, which are two long-term projects of mine. Since I studied animation during my undergraduate studies and still keep it as a passion, I might want to turn my novel into an animated film in the distant future if I have the time and allies.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When I was a pupil studying at a boarding school, my roommate tried to comfort me by telling me that “all great writers have a tragic childhood” one night. Bedtime whispers were our secret daily routine that dorm supervisors would never discover.

That conversation might be the weirdest thing that happened to me ever because, at the time, I didn’t know that I would be a writer or even wanted to be a writer yet. However, I understand she just wanted to encourage me to live on. The only naive assumption she had is that to survive, I am just supposed to get through a tragic childhood, when in reality, I need to survive from my family. The latter is a much more complicated challenge than a limited-time childhood.

Over the past twenty years, I have gradually walked in the direction of writing as a career, but it didn’t happen with the mindset that if I am resilient enough, then I can be a successful writer. Instead, I relied heavily on writing as a mental hideout to survive emotional and physical abuse in my daily family life.

I have been extremely fortunate to have met some like-minded and inspiring creative writing mentors, who are my friends and were my professors along the journey. With their support, I was luckily accepted into MFA programs in creative writing before graduating from college. However, I am still struggling with the controls imposed on me by my family, so I had to delay my enrollment. This might be the page that I need to write down “to be continued.”

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

Personally, I think we need to soften and reduce the competitiveness in the arts because when a practice becomes overly competitive, the community becomes aggressive and toxic.

This summer, 2024, I spent a long time crafting an article about what negative impacts AIGC has on the artistic ecosystem and why those impacts have been undermined with our editor-in-chief at Donghua Xueshu Pa (动画学术趴), an in-depth academic media rooted in the animation industry in China. As a major Chinese animation publication, we knew the essay was not an article that worked in the favor of many influencers or enterprises. However, we still published it with the idea that we wanted to respond to a more significant humanity concern. I personally want to reassure fellow artists that if they ever feel suppressed and wounded while confronting the increasing popularity of AI, their emotions are entirely justifiable.
After the article was published, we received many long responses in comments. Many professionals who pursue various formats of drawing as a career have been marginalized at work by their employers, who insist AI is much more cost-efficient than human artists.

That removal of our autonomy and right to imagination is precisely the reality that I want to address and wish we could confront together. Other than the copyright infringement issues AIGC carries that everyone already knew but has not resolved, we have some other less eye-catching but equivalently harmful aftermath with the current promotion of AI. For instance, there’s an artificial systematic inequality between AIGC and human artists. AIGC developers are paid generously when they can exploit human artworks as input data for free when many artists need to pay to use AI services while struggling to find the next affordable apartment.

I guess instead of asking what society can do to support artists, I hope more people can make decisions to help push society toward reserving the arts and humanities as a human originality and intelligence conservatory instead of allowing these disciplines to become a business exploitation factory dominated by AI.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siz.photography/

Image Credits

Siz