Abstract

Through referencing the Chinese couplet in both its visual format and its philosophical implications, the article posits that the pairing of photographs plays an active role in sustaining a continuous dialogue with the public that is constantly in flux. Through pairing up, meanings and representations of individual photographs mutate and are transformed. Photographs are a reflective dialogue with the environment at certain moments of the place, and the photographs as a whole form an archive of scattered thoughts over time. They represent a continuity in ideological beliefs about society that is often paradoxical. When some photographs are strategically paired up, they form a different dialogue in context and ideas between them thereby expanding the initial representations of each individual photograph. In turn, the dialogue reshapes the cultural and ideological beliefs of society. While similar pairing approaches exist in the Western mainstream context, this article strives to expand the pairing idea of the Chinese couplet to develop a transcultural implication in image representation.