Michael Cherney captures the lives of the Chinese people through documentary photography, endeavoring to break down the communication obstacles between the East and the West.
Michael Cherney is an award-winning photographer who, after falling in love with the Chinese language, was inspired to travel to China and capture its classic beauty on film. This dream was partly an inspiration from his grandfather, Charles Hoff, a celebrated photojournalist who captured the infamous Hindenburg disaster the moment that it exploded. Cherney captures the lives of the Chinese people through documentary photography, endeavoring to break down the communication obstacles between the East and West. He illuminates China by creating a bridge for native photographers to flash their work, that otherwise would be left in the dark. He even creates a light of hope for young orphans in this region through a non profit organization called Friendship Homes and Schools, intended to educate and bring hope to an ethnically diverse and poverty-stricken area. Michael Cherney and his wife, Dong Huang, currently reside in Los Angeles. To view his artwork, visit www.anian.com.
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Interview with Michael Cherney and Dong Huang
January 30, 2003
Interviewed by Annisa Kau and Nicole Kim
Transcribed by Annisa Kau and Mina Rimba
Introduction: Thank you for joining APA today. I am Annisa Kau and I am Nicole Kim. Our guest is no stranger to the Asia Pacific region. On top of traveling to Tibet, falling in love, and battling cancer, Michael Cherney is an award-winning photographer. Not only does he have a treasure trove of Asian wonders, he serves as the executive coordinator for Friendship Homes and Schools designed to help orphaned children in this area. What more can we say? Welcome Mr. and Mrs. Cherney.
Nicole: How did you first find yourself so closely tied to this part of the world?
Michael: Although, of course, I grew up in China, my interest of China grew because my father has been involved in international trade for forty years. So while I grew up, there were always people visiting from Asia -- Japan, various parts of Korea, China, Taiwan and Hong Kong -- so I was used to it and now feel comfortable having a lot of friends from Asia. And because of my potential interest in getting involved in my father's business, when I went to college, I decided to take Chinese, not really sure of what would happen. But I just felt in love with the language, and eventually went to China to study specifically Chinese for my graduate school. So, one thing just led to another, and my heart has never really left.
Nicole: So expanding on that and your love for China that you found through your family also, there is a section on your website that also links to the works of your grandfather, Charles Hoff, who is also a documentary photographer. Was he an influence that persuaded you to research this field?
Michael: He was a very big influence, as my initial involvement with photography started around 1997. It was the period of time when I was searching around for some kind of purpose and my grandfather had been very influential, considered one of the most masterful photographers of all time. He was with the New York Daily News from the 30's to the 70's, took the famous picture of America [exploding], a lot of boxing photos, and helped invent the kind of genre of sports photography. He died when I was very young -- I was only five. But with the legacy he left behind, the New York Daily News came out with a book about his photography in around 1997. And that really inspired me to at least pick up a camera and see what would happen and after that I just got a lot of positive feedback from professional photographers. But his work is still something I kind of see as a bar, something so high -- especially given the technology I get to work with to reach such masterpieces -- so it continues to be an inspiration.
Annisa: We understand that you were diagnosed with cancer during one of your trips to China. How has this big moment in your life changed the perspective or style of photography on how you capture life?
Michael: It is almost impossible to just put into words how much of a dramatic transformation I had because of that experience. I was actually studying in China at the time and did not have any specific plan to return. In fact Dong and I had been engaged for about a week or so when I went to the hospital and found out about the news. I remembered being very angry for having to come back to the U.S. for treatment and to be dependent on my family again. But in retrospect, despite all of the discomfort, which when you think back it is hard to remember, everything turned out for the best. I am healthy and everything is fine and the fact that it makes me think about mortality really has changed me about my direction in what I really want to do in my life. In retrospect, it was a very positive experience. Photography was something that came as an answer to that. What really inspires me about photography is that it really forces you to witness with quality when you are observing something. Am I really observing deeply enough that I will be able to take a piece of my surroundings, bring it somewhere else, show it to someone else and have them understand what I saw by making that judgment and getting rid of that prejudice through this skill of photography? So, it is kind of selfish that I use photography as a way to test the quality of my own observation.
Nicole: Did you take any photos while you were sick also?
Michael: No. In fact, I remember being in China as a student and taking some casual videos and snap shots but it was always just regular snap shot photography, but nothing for art's sake. When I was ill, there was a period of time of not really knowing about what the future was, if there was even going to be a future. And I just threw out a lot of things, except for pictures, books, writings and things like that. And for a few years, I didn't even have a functioning cap on, just kind of living for the present moment. After seeing my grandfather's stuff and seeing the kind of communication that he could get through with that kind of photography that almost transcends language, it really came through as an art and it still is now. It is very rare now for me to take the camera out to take snap shots of family events or something like that. It has become almost a different kind of way of seeing the camera and that's why I don't do it all the time.
Annisa: (To Dong) I understand that you are currently studying at the UCLA film school. Are there any plans of using the skills you learn in school and incorporating Michael's photography to create a documentary film about China?
Dong: Yes, very possible. At this point what I am learning and studying is how to look at films critically, to see how it participates and reflects the culture of society and also to critique the methods that filmmakers use -- to critique it in a sense of what sort of methods they use in particular documentaries. What is a documentary? It may just present reality without any medium or any filter, which is absolutely not the case because when you turn on a camera, people will be different. Definitely I would like to take what I learn, practice how to tell stories and how to do it if I want to go to certain parts of China to tell the stories to people there. People used to say that documentaries had no filter and you just present reality, but that is really not the case. So, I am definitely going to work on it and that is definitely an interesting topic.
Nicole: So, what is the topic you are interested in that you want to do right now?
Dong: Actually, I am very interested in Friends, Home and School. It is an organization that we both are a part of. We host orphans in China in Sichuan Province and I would like to, if possible, go there. I have never met the children and I would like to go there maybe to record their life and go back a couple of years later and see how their lives are. So it is a kind of documentary of their growth and of course also their lives in general. It is a very different reality and they need the support to have schooling and to even survive.
Michael: It is a very fascinating tiny little drop in China and even just this area in China, which happens to be quite rural. What we do is really a drop in the bucket, but this particular part of China, Liangshan Prefecture, is one of the most ethnically diverse parts of China. A lot of people don't realize that although around 95% of China is Han Chinese, there is another 5% or 6% made up of over 50 different ethnic groups. Some are very famous, like the Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchurian, and so this particular area happened to have over 30 different ethnicities in one particular area. A lot of them are the Yi people, which share a similar kind of language background with Tibet but not religious background. But they are just not really heard of because they are not associated with a religion or a cause. What makes this particular charity special is that even among so many ethnicities in China, there is a lot of ignorance and lack of understanding and stereotypes. So in this small little scale, you have children with no families who normally would be orphans and on the streets that are in a class together, able to go to school with each other, even though they are of different ethnicities. When they get out from school, they can say, "I knew someone from this school" and can stand up. So that is why it has some appeal here for support because as much as China can be similar to the U.S. that way, a melting pot kind of way, this is one of the few parts of China that can do that. This was something that started a few years ago. Some very close friends, a couple in Arizona, Lois and Stephen Drake who still are really the inspiration behind the charity, keep it going strong. I really got involved first to help organize some trips to visit the children and I try to go at least once a year, or have someone go once a year to take photos of the children. It is important for them to have a visit and also important for people to see how they are progressing.
Dong: There are pictures on the website and they are really cute.
Nicole: Actually since you brought it up that you go to China, do you both go together? I mean is it hard to be apart? Is it for a long time?
Michael: It is funny to say and Dong can talk about it too, but we really haven't traveled in China extensively for quite sometime together. We have gone back to see family in Beijing together a few times. Over the past few years we've gone separately mainly just because Dong has been able to go during summer break from school and I had to go for different work and photo related reasons. So we are planning on going this summer. Dong has never really had the opportunity to see western China yet, these areas of Sichuan Province where the orphans are and where I have been doing a lot of my photography too. So we plan to go there together this summer.
Nicole: So I have a question for Dong. I'm sure you can fully appreciate Michael's efforts in trying to get native Chinese photographers work into the American media. I saw some photographs on the website also on photos of monks. So without Michael's efforts to do that it would be very hard for them to get this exposure. Why do you think it's so hard for these talented native photographers to break out into mainstream media in America?
Dong: I would say it's just general people like Michael who build that bridge for the introduction of these talents. There is just not that many people who would commit themselves to do it.
Michael: It would be the same with a lot of different media; it is just really starting to blossom in certain areas. But I can explain a little bit about that. There are a couple of friends who I've tried to get their photography recognized here. But the work we haven't mentioned yet, ImagineChina, is just some work that I do with an agency. The inspiration behind it was really because you would never really see the credits of Chinese photographers in international publications and the reason for it is that you have wire service photographers in the big cities. In fact, those wire services were often not allowed to hire local Chinese photographers. This kind of makes it a little bit, not so easy to get the news. The private agency was set up to kind of provide a venue for Chinese photographers. So it is really wonderful to finally see some resources and recognition going to photographers around China. There are also parts of different ethnicities that live in different areas of the country. The technology has really facilitated the way they can get the photos into our agency and still be out doing what they want to do. The agency really takes care of getting the photos out to the rest of the world.
Dong: Of course the photos are categorized to two types. One is art photos, one is photos for news, but mostly are for editorials.
Michael: Sometimes the boundaries blur. You can have such wonderfully artistic editorial photos but you get art photography for exhibitions and other kinds of books that are still a totally different matter. This is something that we can grow into.
Nicole: That actually leads me right into my next question. I can imagine China would have these strict laws, especially for foreign photographers. I was wondering if you have experienced some kind of hindrances that the government or the society doesn't want you to portray of China.
Michael: I can actually tell you a funny story about this. I don't think it is specific to photography, maybe journalism. Anytime that you have done something that might be either intentionally or inadvertently problematic to China, you can relate to this kind of experience. I remember traveling with a very close friend of mine, a Dutch journalist, who was actually the Beijing bureau chief at the time of a Dutch paper. We traveled with a photographer from his newspaper, myself, and we went to do a story about various beach resorts. It just so happens that in China the most famous beach resort is called Beidaihe, it's a place in the northeast. It's kind of like a Camp David thing where the leaders retire to at certain times of the year to have discussions regarding political matters. So it's a sensitive area. We had traveled there to take some pictures. We spent a full day walking around, talking to people, and taking various pictures along the beach. About 3 o'clock in the morning that night, we hadn't told anyone we were there or anything, but we just had a knock on the door by the police saying that they were inviting us to go drink tea. They said we had to go downstairs to drink tea because we have to talk about something. And so we went downstairs and they said, "Today you took some pictures of potentially sensitive subject matters and we need to see the film. We need to take the film and if there is any of the film that is sensitive we have to confiscate that. The rest you can have back." They were very polite about it. Normally, because I'm quite subdued it would have ended right there but my friend, the journalist, likes to ease the opportunity a bit. So he talked about how the situation would be in Holland and that this kind of thing would never happen, and about our integrity as journalists. And so it was going right through the ears, in one ear, out the other, of the police. You know Holland is Holland, China is China. Either politely or not politely they were going to have the film one way or another. So we gave them our film and the next day they brought back our developed pictures with some negatives missing here and there. I couldn't even remember which ones were gone. But the funniest thing about it was that we said we were still planning on being there for some time so what places should we not photograph. And they said, "We couldn't tell you." So there is that very ominous side; of course it used to be a lot worse in China. They might think that you know something that you don't. You don't want to bring trouble to people. If you are a foreigner the worst thing that can happen is they tell you to leave. Or if you're really pushing it as a journalist, they can rough you up a bit. But locals can really get into a lot of trouble.
Annisa: Has this experience changed the way you feel about working in China.
Dong: (To Michael) No, I think you're used to it.
Michael: Yes, the thing is -- I don't know if I would consider this a weakness -- I never really pushed myself towards confrontational materials, which is really necessary sometimes for in-depth reportage. There is a lot of subject matter that you can address that is recognized as problems on both sides, like poverty and things that you won't necessarily get in trouble for covering. But a lot of my photographs focus on finding beauty. I am not too ashamed if they are too overtly beautiful or something because it's just really an aesthetic kind of thing.
Nicole: Actually I have a question for Dong really quick. Since you kind of felt both the Chinese media and America's, how do you feel when going back and being exposed to both cultures with the way media is?
Dong: I am actually thinking that for China, everyone knows it's propaganda. Therefore people know that what it is is what it is. But people here have this illusion of the fact that news is all transparent, which is not true. You know behind all the news there is definitely a clear agenda, which news comes first and for how long. Everything in the news, there is definitely a clear political agenda behind that people are not aware of. So in a sense, the Chinese media is at least more honest. I say this in talking about the news, we know there is a filter. But here we don't know, yet it is there. So it is almost like an invisible filter. In a sense of people's awareness of it, of course China has a lot more. In terms of content, we don't trust them entirely and sometimes it is very, very boring in the news.
Michael: To reinforce it, in another words, is if you ask a Chinese person what the purpose of the news is, they will know and say it's a means of knowing the government line, what the government wants to tell you. We know that maybe there is certain information that is not included in the news and people may not have access to the information they need, but at least they know the truth about what they are receiving. It can be more insiduous if you take things at face value. A lot of the news may be structured in a way to have some certain kind of effect that you are not even thinking about.
Dong: It is media literacy that we need, I mean we need that everywhere but probably particularly here because we think that we are told that this is the truth, and it is not transparent.
Annisa: Seeing that you guys create images of the East, how do you feel about the portrayals of America and the west by the Chinese? Do you think the American news media accurately portrays the Chinese society or are the pictures just in the media?
Dong: For the first question, I can't really say that much because I have only been back to China during the summer time. I don't really watch that much television. So I say based on my old days when I was in China -- that would be like the mid-80s and early 90s -- when I was a lot younger. At that time we had this show, "Dallas" and "Dynasty," well some shows like that where something gave people the impression that that's how every American lived. You know that kind of way of life. So there is definitely that utopian kind of thing, a very capitalist, decadent kind of life. And there are little shows like "Our Home" about this little family in the suburbia. Those are the kinds of warm shows that people usually like a lot. But in terms of what kind of portrayal of society, I say it is not very concrete or not very rich, not very diversified. But lately I'm not sure.
Michael: I think people have become more and more, especially in urban areas. Always in more rural areas you have certain types of stereotypes that never change. Either through certain movies or TV, non-Chinese or Americans on the whole are more rich than Chinese. Or in the early 90s, there was a big stereotype that every American probably had AIDS. But people have more of an understanding, although certain very subtle things about life here are kind of a tension that you'd have living in China too that you can't quite put your finger on. They see that there is something there, although it is very hard to understand without really ever being able to understand it completely. Although at the same time in order to really appreciate those wonderful things here, it's very helpful to spend some time there. Go out and come back. As far as an American's perception of China, there are some things that are accurate but it's only one piece of the puzzle. It is a very limited excerpt, and on the whole Americans have a very limited appetite for international news. Ask people in China about America and they can tell you a lot. At the same time, here, people are not particularly interested and will know Chinese food and maybe a few things about the Great Wall, that's about it, some city names, and have a general overall impression: repressive society, poor peasants, and exoticism. That's why I try to give slide shows at schools and just give any kind of venue possible. People don't realize China has Muslims, China has religion in the countryside, you know different kinds of religion. From the urban areas you can find things like Costco and Wal-Mart. There are all these things in the country where it is just a very diverse world that people don't really know about.
Annisa: Of all the moments you have encountered and captured on film in China, which has given you the greatest impact on your work?
Michael: Do you mean a particular photo? It is hard to say a specific moment. Like with my grandfather it was very clear cut that he took this picture of the exploding Hindenburg, which was a once in a lifetime thing. Other photographers who were there froze. There was this moment, he captured it, he was young at the time and it really skyrocketed him. Of course he continued to prove his greatness after that, but most photographers never really get a moment like that in their whole career. I remember a close friend of my father saying to me, "If you want to be a photographer, do it and don't wait around for a blimp to explode, you know, because it's not going to happen." And so it is hard to find a defining moment as far as drama's concern. But there is this one particular photo of a street scene in the southwest city of Chengdu. I brought a couple of interpretive photographers from Arizona, who went over it to China on a cultural exchange, and we came to an old neighborhood in Chengdu where they were showing us what these little old buildings looked like. As soon as we stepped out of the car I just saw a nice frame and I took a nice picture of a guy walking down the street and there was a bicycle and that just stuck with me, that particular photo. I've used it because it feels very, has a certain Asian aesthetics about it, a certain quietness that China has as well. People have liked it for what it is but I have also worked and mounted. My latest exploration with photography is to mount it in traditional ways, print it onto traditional paper, and experiment with different formats of how to display that photo outside of just that standard rectangle on a texture. Just the way it was traditionally done with painting in China, as far as my artistic development goes, that photo has had the most influence.
Closing statement: The strait of Anian was a mythical waterway of Asia, and that is what exactly Michael Cherney's work has accomplished; a gateway from the west to the east. We would like to thank Mr. and Mrs. Cherney for sharing their experiences with us today. And for more information or to take a look at his Photography, you can go online at www.Anian.net. Thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time at Asia Pacific Arts.
Published: Friday, July 18, 2003
