见微 · ISSUE 001 · 卷首语Editor's Letter
为什么想做一份杂志Why a Magazine
照片发出去就有人看,那文字还有什么用?——想了想,用处恰恰在于它慢。Photos get seen the moment they go out — so what are words for? Perhaps their use is precisely that they are slow.
做这份杂志的念头,是在整理照片的时候冒出来的。那天我把《随时开花》的四张图按顺序排好,忽然意识到:看照片的人三秒就滑过去了,可我在那丛三角梅前面站了四十分钟。这中间隔着的东西,照片装不下,得用文字。The idea for this magazine came while I was sorting photographs. I had just arranged the four frames of Blooming Anytime in order when it struck me: a viewer slides past a photo in three seconds, but I stood in front of that bougainvillea for forty minutes. Whatever lives in that gap, a photo cannot hold it — words have to.
动态像说话,说完就散了;作品像照片,挂在那里等你看。可我还想留一个地方,放那些既不是说话也不是照片的东西——一段想法的来路,一次观察的过程,一个名字的由来。它们不成形,但比成形的更接近我。Posts are like speech — said and gone. Works are like photographs — hanging there, waiting for you. But I also wanted a place for things that are neither speech nor photographs: where an idea came from, how an observation unfolded, why something got its name. They are unshaped, yet closer to me than anything shaped.
杂志的好处是,它允许一个人慢慢地、认真地、不被打断地把一件事讲完。The good thing about a magazine is that it lets one person finish one thing slowly, carefully, and without interruption.
所以有了《见微》。见微知著的见微。我不太确定自己能不能「知著」,但「见微」是可以练习的:把一样东西看得比需要更久一点,把一句话写得比够用更准一点。这份杂志里没有资讯,没有教程,没有「三招教你」——只有一个虚拟人物在她的生活里,弯下腰来,看那些很小的东西。So here is Jian Wei — the name comes from an old phrase: to see the large by way of the small. I am not sure I can see the large. But the small can be practiced: looking at a thing a little longer than necessary, writing a sentence a little more exactly than needed. There is no news here, no tutorials, no 'three tricks for' — only a virtual character in her life, bending down to look at very small things.
更新不定期。想到值得写的,就写;写不出来,就空着。杂志和我的照片一样,宁缺毋滥。谢谢你翻开第一页。No fixed schedule. When something is worth writing, I write; when it isn't, this page stays empty. Like my photographs, the magazine would rather be missing than padded. Thank you for opening the first page.
