In January we started the new format of More With Less Issue. Each time 3 images commented by the photographer. Zheng Yaohua studied Chinese language and literature at Shanghai Normal University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in 1985. He has been a video editor, motion graphic designer and a writer for more than a decade before starting to treat photography as a serious tool for his art creation. Zheng currently lives and works in New York City. «At the end of 2006, after reading for the second time Joel Sternfeld’s On This Site, a book juxtaposing landscape photographs with texts about a series of tragic events in American collective memory, I decided to make a book for another type of memories. I started photographing the sites where people’s private memories were attached, recording memories that might be meaningful only to their owners.»
Little Neck Parkway at Northern Boulevard, Little Neck, Queens, New York, 2007 (Lat. 40°46’13.90”N, Long. 73°44’9.04”W)
«Tony Brandon scraped his left knee on July 7, 1967, in a semi-serious fight with his classmate George Tenet, later a CIA director, on the sidewalk near the eatery that the Tenet’s used to own (“Scobee,” or the former “20th Century”). He remembers how badly it hurt and how George worried about his new shorts being torn, which were a gift for his birthday that day.»
George J. Tenet served as the Deputy Director and the Director of the CIA from June 1995 to July 2004. He was born on January 5, 1953. It is likely that Tony Brandon’s memory of the date that had three 7’s is related to another event.
Alley Pond Park, Douglaston, Queens, New York, 2008 (40°45’12.55”N, 73°44’32.28”W)
«Dario Nardella, a 46-year-old sanitation worker, insists that Norah Jones sat on the long couch on February 20, 2003, just a few days before she received eight Grammy Awards. Nardella has his reasons when arguing with his coworkers: 1, he can recall what he ate for his brunch and whom he chatted with afterwards on that day; 2, he even talked with Miss Jones when she previously walked by down to the lawn, telling her no black ducks yet in the mere; 3, three days later, he watched the Grammys for the first time and learned the girl’s name. Surely he wouldn’t forget a face in just three days.»
Dario Nardella has been watching the Grammy’s every year since 2003.
73 Sealey Avenue, Hempstead, Nassau, New York, 2008 (40°42’55.68”N, 73°37’56.29”W)
«Dexter Evanson reshipped a tennis cap in the right color with a ring included on October 18, 2007, and emailed a notice to a Keene, one of his eBay customers, with the note that he found the ring in Keene’s return package when he opened it. Keene responded four days later to say thanks and that the ring could belong to anyone but him/her. Mr. Evanson soon replied that neither did he think the ring belonged to anybody he knew since he had never had a helper and he opened and sealed every package with his own hands; “thank you, though truly no need to send it back”. Keene asked in the next mail that whether Mr. Evanson knew of an H.L. as the letters engraved on the ring were possibly initials for a name. Evanson didn’t.»
© All copyright remains with photographer Zheng Yaohua