Following He Fa's public accounts from photographic collage in 2012 through the theatre space established in 2015 to Real Image, this essay considers how camera positions, viewing distances and collective creation change one another.
P4 Theater website essay · 2026-09-07
A landscape contains more than one viewing position
One way into He Fa's theatre work is to begin with how he makes a landscape photograph. In his 2020 essay What Is Real Image?, he recalls his sustained work on photographic collage during university and the completion of Mountain Beyond Mountains in 2012. This account returns the questions behind the later establishment of P4 Theater to photography: how an image is formed, where we stand to look at it, and what we take to be a complete reality.1
The point of a collage is not simply the number of photographs. An image composed of different fragments opens a distance between the landscape as a whole and the individual acts of photographing. A continuous landscape seen from afar reveals dispersed points of focus and viewpoints as one approaches it. He Fa's personal website also introduces Mountain Beyond Mountains through this change between distance and proximity. From this, we can formulate a question for reading the subsequent practice: must the viewer move in order to discover something they did not see a moment ago? This is an analysis of relationships between works, not a claim that the photographic collage already contained every later theatrical method.3
The photographer enters the conditions of the photograph
What Is Real Image? goes on to recount He Fa and Zhang Shaohua's discussions of portrait photography. They were dissatisfied with stiff or deliberately posed behaviour before the camera. They also recognised that a photograph could not be explained solely through the state of the person being photographed. How the photographer approaches, whether the two people trust one another and whether the setting is appropriate all participate in the image's formation. The question therefore shifts from how to capture a likeness to how two people can inhabit the act of photographing together.1
This step changes the author's position. The photographer still selects the moment and the frame, but can no longer treat his own intervention as transparent. His waiting, questioning or stepping back changes what the other person can do. Correspondingly, the person photographed is more than an object awaiting representation. Bringing their relationship into the work also makes the time outside the photograph a matter for discussion: how the encounter begins, how a photographic session is answered, and what happens after the photographs are viewed.
The theatre becomes a camera one can enter
He Fa's account describes the construction of the space in 2015 in concrete terms. He and Zhang Shaohua discussed renting and designing it; Zhang Aoshuang proposed the theatre plan. One part of the space was a black stage, the other a white area for work and the audience. He Fa later understood it as a giant camera: a person moves from a bright area into darkness, then waits for light to enter.1
The metaphor is illuminating because it connects space with action. Ordinarily, the person being photographed cannot enter the inside of the camera. A theatre allows a body to step into the conditions under which an image is made. Darkness, curtains, lighting and distance are more than a visual style: they also organise the rhythm of an encounter. This building history cannot be attributed to a single person. He Fa, Zhang Shaohua and Zhang Aoshuang's contributions at different stages all belong in the account.
From a single photograph to repeated encounters
The eight and a half parts of Real Image alternate photographing with viewing and expression. A photograph is consequently no longer just a result delivered at the end of a meeting; it can become the starting point for the next one. Impressions left by the first session may later be seen, interpreted or revised. The time between encounters enters the work's structure.1
He Fa's passage from photography into theatre can therefore be understood as an ongoing expansion of the conditions of looking: first, multiple camera positions enter one image; then the relationship between photographer and subject enters the photographic process; subsequently, space and duration enter a shared experience. This line of inquiry explains how the questions move more effectively than a simple list of three media—photography, theatre and film. Yet it should not be written as an inevitable history of progress without interruptions, disputes or collaborators.
Continue reading through the same question
Three questions can remain open while following this creative trajectory: who organises the act of looking, who can answer it, and whether the relationship between the two people remains visible after the image is complete. Mountain Beyond Mountains unsettles a single viewpoint; Real Image makes encounters recur; P4's public articles preserve different participants' understandings of the live situation. Connections between the works need to be established through these concrete differences.2
Reading the structure of the eight and a half parts can show how time is arranged. Reading about changes in P4's spaces can show how rooms affect viewing distances. Reading the relationship between Last Rehearsal and the film opens a further question: when later audiences can watch only through a screen, which encounters remain, and which conditions have changed?
Sources and original texts
- What Is Real Image? — He Fa, 2020-06-21
2. P4 Theater, Ten Years — He Fa, 2025-03-08
3. He Fa: Creative Profile and CV — P4 Theater, project page
An essay for the P4 Theater website, based on public archives. Its analysis is not presented as the direct speech of He Fa or other participants; historical source texts retain their own credits and dates.
Chinese webpage: https://p4theater.cn/knowledge/he-fa-photography-to-theatre/