Still. The East End Photographs is a collection of images about the landscape of Long Island, New York. Reflective and transcendent, these images evoke the quality of our natural world defined by light and the contours of nature. Cheng has photographed the environment using a shift of the focus plane within the camera to detail in a non-distinct yet decidedly emotional way, to evoke a poetic interpretation of the landscape that is constantly deriving its beauty and power from the color palate and a sense of movement that defines the landscape of Long Island and which has inspired so many artists. In changing the focal plane he was able to redefine what he was seeing, in a sense, to un/define the reality and to present images, in a way that is open. That the clarity and truth is the viewers vision, and that he the image maker, is the portal into that vision.
Text by Elisabeth Biondi, Edwina von Gal, Jack Larsen, E.E. Cummings, and Terrie Sultan