"As Innerly As Possible"

Wah-Ming Chang

Pessoa had advised that a rule of life should be to think, “as innerly as possible,” of oneself as a force. My innerly voice, which contains the histories of my ecstasies and wonders, has been unfolding itself, first in fiction and now in photography, in both color and black and white, through peripatetic intersections between man, ghost, and the geometric city. For words to accumulate on the page, a narrative intention must be in place. Conversely, for a photograph to occur, the narrative is in the picture-taking itself, in the act of concentrating time. In this way I meet with Pessoa daily, though never at the same time of day, for a walk around the block.

Wah-Ming Chang – Brooklyn, New York, 2009
Wah-Ming Chang – San Cristóbal, Mexico, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – San Cristóbal, Mexico, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – Flushing, New York, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – Mexico City, Mexico, 2010
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – Manhattan Bridge, New York, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – Woodstock, New York, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – Woodstock, New York, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2009
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2010
Wah-Ming Chang – Flushing, New York, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2009
Wah-Ming Chang – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2011
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New York City, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang – New Orleans, 2012
Wah-Ming Chang
Wah-Ming Chang

Wah-Ming Chang has received fellowships for fiction from the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Bronx Writers Center, the Urban Artist Initiative, and twice from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her fiction has appeared in Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture and Mississippi Review, and her nonfiction and photography in Words without Borders and Open City. The writing began in 1986; the photography, 2009.