Glenn Zucman

San Diego

I live in a world of grey
Iris Chang lives in a world of black & white

To me everything
is the balancing
of arcane, minute forces

To Iris there are moments in your life
where you have to make a choice
when you can do the right thing
or live the rest of your life as a lie

To me, “I tried it once, but I didn’t inhale”
isn’t really a lie someone told us
it’s really a lie we agreed to tell with him
that the schism in him
is really the schism in American culture
that a less ambiguous answer
would have made it impossible
for one or another of the groups
in America’s divide
to support him

Iris says there is truth
there is lie
there is nothing else

Iris compels us
to take the high road
regardless of the outcome

If you take the low road
even if you succeed
inevitably you still have nothing

If you take the high road
regardless of the outcome
at least you took the high road

As I’ve grown older
and more savvy
regarding the operations of the
“real world”
it took Iris to remind me
of the simple clarity
that a child understands
but which an adult
so easily obfuscates

Isn’t that what these portraits are all about?
About teasing some moment of clarity
from all the obfuscation?

In The Rape of Nanking, Iris tells the story
of a forgotten WWII genocide
reminds us of yet another
of humankind’s transgressions
that would so much more easily
if not truthfully
be forgotten

She chants the names
and the stories
of the women
and soldiers
and elderly
and infants
who were extinguished
whose blood once made the Yangtze river
flow red
but whose memory is more conveniently
forgotten
by a world looking forward