Despite having worked as director Wong Kar-wai’s official set photographer and accumulated years of experience under his belt photographing strangers, landscapes, and countless celebrities, this legendary photographer still isn’t accustomed to being the focus of attention. With cameras turned on him at a recent press conference, he tells the room, “Feel free to ask plenty of questions because I don’t really know what to talk about.”
That’s Wing Shya for you.
他是香港著名导演王家卫的御用摄影师，也曾为张国荣拍过个人写真。他拍过许多明星，也拍过无数路人和风景。但是在面对几个记者的镜头时，他却说，“你们可以多问我一些问题，因为我好像不知道要说什么。”
这就是夏永康。
Wing prefers keeping a low profile and to let his camera do the talking. Even though he’s always on movie sets and working with famous celebrities, he remains humble. “Everyone is busy filming the movie, and I’m there, crouched on the ground, trying to snap a few photos.”
On movie productions, there can be no interruptions when a take begins. It’s only after the director yells “Cut” that any photographs can be taken. As a result, what’s captured is the moment immediately following a take, a split second where the actors let their guards down and show themselves in a more vulnerable state. Wing loves to capture these authentic moments.
夏永康喜欢把姿态放低，躲在镜头背后。虽然时常出没于大牌云集的片场，但通常都是“大家都在拍电影，只有我蹲在地上拍剧照。”
那是身为“剧照师”的工作习惯——在正式拍摄的时候，不能够打扰入戏的演员们，只能在导演喊停了之后再拍。这样一来，镜头会捕捉到情绪和姿态都一下子放松的演员，那照片所呈现的感受，也就常常更为私密。夏永康很享受这样的视角，能够躲到背后记录下人们最真实的一面。
Wing says, “I like to document what happens after we wrap on set. People will often ask me, ‘Everything’s finished, so what is there left to shoot?’ But I pay them no mind and keep shooting.” Wing’s always ready on the side, waiting for the right moment – it’s this patience that has allowed Wing to capture his iconic image of Leslie Cheung in contemplation as the actor waited to begin a take. His understanding on the importance of waiting has also allowed him to document the honest range of emotions experienced by directors and crew members alike on various movie sets.
“I won’t try to overshadow the moment. I always try to make myself as ‘small’ as possible. I just enjoy the process of photography; I want to take in the atmosphere and people I’m photographing.” Wing confesses he won’t even look at photographs he’s taken in the past. For him, photography is about being present – it’s about witnessing the moment in real time.
夏永康说：“我喜欢拍大家收工之后的状态。大家说，都结束了，怎么你还拍？我就还是拍。”缩在角落，等到最后，或许正因为这样，他拍到过张国荣在等开机时的沉思，也拍到了从导演到工作人员或忙碌或放空的神情，人世百态好像尽在其中。
“我没有把自己放得太大，我把自己缩得很小。我就是享受，享受拍东西的过程，享受当下的那个环境，那些人。”夏永康甚至不看自己曾经拍下的照片，对他来说，拍下的那一刻过去也就过去了，唯独当时当刻、此时此景，才是拍照最真实的意义。
Of course, the subjects, environment, and lighting aren’t always in ideal conditions. Often, Wing has to play around and experiment. “I like mistakes. So a lot of the time, I’ll just have fun and create something out of a mistake.” Wing recalls a time when he was faced with the challenge of shooting in an almost pitch-black room. After improvising and moving light sources around, he ended up taking a three-minute-long exposure. When the photograph was finally developed, he described the shot to be “beautiful, similar to shadows cast by tree branches.”
当然，人物、场景、光线，不可能时时刻刻都完美，这时候夏永康就会想着和光影玩游戏。“因为我喜欢错误。所以常常会在错误中去玩些什么。”曾经有一次，在近乎全黑的空间里摄影，他亲自上阵打光，上下左右移动光源，最后把接近三分钟的长曝光照片洗出来，光影显得影影绰绰，像是“枝叶树林的影子，很好看”。
Wing’s affinity for making mistakes is linked to his love of authenticity. As someone who’s passionate about capturing genuine moments, Wing prefers using film cameras, seeing it as a medium that’s able to better reproduce reality. The inherent constraints of analog film limit how much his photographs can be manipulated in post-production. What’s initially captured with the camera will often be the final result. For Wing, this is infinitely more fascinating.
所谓喜欢错误，其实是因为喜欢真实。夏永康偏爱使用胶片相机，无法加工修改，无需合成处理，照片中定格的瞬间往往就是最终呈现的模样，这对夏永康来说却更为迷人。真实就是有错误的。
Sometimes Wing will design a narrative and a setting to allow his subjects to better ease into a certain mood. But according to Wing, more often than not, he won’t set anything up at all. Instead, he’ll just let his models chat with an assistant, and he’ll start shooting from the side. “When shooting different people, I’ll use different methods.”
夏永康会设定一个剧本和环境来告诉被拍摄的人，好让人进入情绪，去捕捉情感流露的瞬间。但夏永康说，有时候他也不会假设场景，只让助理和那人先聊起来，他在一旁拍，“拍摄不同的人，方法是不一样的。”
These past few years, Wing has started photographing landscapes. Hazy, dark, and cryptic, his landscape photography is representative of the photographer’s own changing outlooks on life. Nowadays, when a day isn’t going right, he’ll embrace it as is rather than lamenting. “When it suddenly rains, I used to blame the weather. But now, I’ll work around the weather’s temperamental nature. I treat the weather as if were my girlfriend.”
For Wing, he sees many of his photos as a direct representation of his feelings at the time of capture. As life goes on, his photography changes with it. But to him, there’s never a need to look back and over-analyze the past – Wing lives and shoots in the present.
这些年夏永康也拍风景。镜头对准的内容有时候迷雾朦胧，有时候昏暗晦涩，很难让人不去联想到那是否是因为镜头背后的人产生了心境上的变化。夏永康说，“如果突然下雨，以前我会怪天气，想为什么今天这么不顺利。但现在我会去和天气玩，把它当作我的女朋友。”
但要说什么变化，夏永康却觉得他拍的内容只是当时情景和感受而已，每个阶段都有不同，不曾回头琢磨，也不曾思量过心态的改变——活在当下，就拍在当下。
So when approached with the opportunity to organize a solo exhibition, Wing delivered over 10,000 photographs to Karen Smith, the curator of the exhibition, allowing her to choose which images to showcase. The exhibition isn’t separated by celebrity portraits or personal projects; it spans across different time periods and is difficult to categorize into a single, all-encompassing theme. When asked about this, Wing chuckled, saying, “Theme? It’s hard to paint this exhibition in a single color. If you want to talk about the theme, it would be reality.”
所以在要办展览的时候，夏永康就把一万多张照片统统交管给策展人Karen Smith挑选，最后呈现时既没有刻意区分明星摄影和随手拍的内容，却又都涵盖到了各个时期，他很喜欢，却也让人很难一以概括，用一种相似的底色去描述。对此，夏永康笑着说：“底色？那很难说是一种颜色。要说底色的话，就是真实吧。”
Wing Shya’s solo exhibition is currently on display at the Shanghai Center of Photography. He’s also recently released a personal photography compilation book, which is available for purchase here.
Event: ACTING OUT – Wing Shya
Exhibition Date: 11/8/2017 ~ 1/10/2018
Opening Hours: Tuesday ~ Saturday
Address:
Shanghai Center of Photography
2555-1 Longing Avenue
Xuhui District, Shanghai
People’s Republic of China
Website: www.wingshya.com
活动: “越轨・夏永康”
展期: 2017年11月8日——2018年1月10日
时间: 周二至周日
地点:
中国
上海徐汇区
龙腾大道2555-1号
上海摄影艺术中心
网站: www.wingshya.com
