© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

Looking at Pengkuei Ben Huang’s photographs, I can’t help but think once again of the myth of Narcissus, the proud and superb youth who gazes at his own vanity reflected in the water, and how science has already played a role in dismantling this anthropological narcissism. Freud offers a concise lesson on this topic in his essay "A Difficulty in the Path of Psychoanalysis (1917)." First, he recalls Copernicus’ contribution in overturning the Ptolemaic system, turning Earth into a mere speck of dust in the universe. The first humiliation inflicted upon humanity was cosmological. This was followed by Darwin’s, or the biological one, which placed human beings back within the animal kingdom, in an evolutionary groove—far from any notion of alien supremacy. But the one that concerns us most as we view these landscape cross-sections of the wall under construction in the Tohoku region of Japan, following the devastating 2011 tsunami, is that of the consciousnessl and the fact that we are not masters in our own house, as there is an unconscious that inhabits us. Freud compares this "foreign" unconscious to the cold, icy sea of the North, threatening the shores of the ego, against which we build barriers to defend ourselves from its constant assault.

© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

And isn't it precisely this fear of being overwhelmed by something larger than ourselves—cosmologically, biologically, and now intellectually—that is depicted in this series "Coastal Mammoth"? The photographer questions the ability of this massive infrastructural project to contain the power of the sea, the force of climate change, and the destructive might of nature. Freud also references the Dutch, who have long worked—and continue to work—at containing the dark waters of the North, evoking the experience of the Zuiderzee and the draining of its so-called “immorality,” the excess of the sea. Behind this attempt to contain "life in excess," lies a risk of isolation, paralysis, and decay—a kind of anaerobic thought. Every barrier, border, limit, and wall conceals the deeper question about confronting the threat of the unconscious knocking at our doors. How can we welcome the power of nature into our lives? How do we come to terms with the subversive surplus that inhabits our gaze and that we cannot help but contemplate? The choice is whether to give voice to the unconscious, to the sea, or to delude ourselves into thinking we can keep it out—barricading ourselves, closing doors and windows, and remaining in darkness.

© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

© Pengkuei Ben Huang from "Coastal Mammoth"

These images reveal the face of a contemporary unease, of a narcissistic incontinence, and of a tangible effort to silence the universe and become hostages of ourselves.

Pengkuei Ben Huang (website)