Chinese Dreamers
Chinese Dreamers
This is just a little photography assignment on dreamers in China with about 10 pieces, shot by Liao Weitang, a photographer and poet born in Guangdong province in 1975. Liao spent his childhood in Zhuhai, a southeastern coastal city famous for its seafood and Lychee, followed by his residence in Hong Kong and Beijing in his 20s. Liao also flies between Chinese provinces including Haerbin, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Yunnan… Liao has never taken any of these abovementioned places as his home. This insider- outsider identity makes him the best person to observe China, just like Edward Said to Middle East.
In these pictures there show the scenes of China we are not familiar– no Tiananmen Square, no Mao’s rosy cheeks, no fog- barraged willows, no bright red lanterns, these are not the images of “China”, which is a hyperreality piled up by unilateral, selected impressions fed to us through media. At the same time, this is the China that we are familiar, swimmers at Houhai, kids standing behind the rusty brick walls, elderly under a tree in a park, these are actually all the things that we encounter in China everyday.
The photographer follows his personal preference by utilizing monotone in this series. On realism people and scenes he adds an effect of pinhole camera, which is characterized by dark from the side of the photo that fades when it comes towards the center. On the background’s visual rough texture characterized by graininess, human figures are thrown by a slab of whiteness. Human figures’ fade away like they are being scotched by a poisonous white sun. The aura of human figures that was already eliminated by the possibility of photography multiplication is further weakened by the wiping off part of their face outlines. The huaman figures in the pictures are devastated to be the backgrounds of the backgrounds behind them.
The title “Chinese Dreamers” reveals that the grassroots in the pictures are actually in dreams, they are in dreams not because they are dreaming, but for the fact that they are, placed, or misplaced, into somebody’s dreams, or the whole country’ s dreams of good future. In these dreams some people found their bliss and some are scalded by the overheated reality: Like Yang Yi, the balladmonger who wandered around museums and universities, was still swooped by the cops when he gave his engrossing tunes that he leant from the north of Shannxi in the era of the rising of the economy. This set of pictures unveils how these grassroots are trapped in some other people’s dream through one of photography’ nature, immobility.
The power of photography, is “measured’ by the extent of how it nullifies the reality and creates its own, it is a process from making replica to creation. The strength of Chinese Dreamers comes from eliminating all others’ Weltanschauung and creating its own China by photographic skills and dissecting the reality.
This is just a little photography assignment on dreamers in China with about 10 pieces, shot by Liao Weitang, a photographer and poet born in Guangdong province in 1975. Liao spent his childhood in Zhuhai, a southeastern coastal city famous for its seafood and Lychee, followed by his residence in Hong Kong and Beijing in his 20s. Liao also flies between Chinese provinces including Haerbin, Xinjiang, Mongolia, Yunnan… Liao has never taken any of these abovementioned places as his home. This insider- outsider identity makes him the best person to observe China, just like Edward Said to Middle East.
In these pictures there show the scenes of China we are not familiar– no Tiananmen Square, no Mao’s rosy cheeks, no fog- barraged willows, no bright red lanterns, these are not the images of “China”, which is a hyperreality piled up by unilateral, selected impressions fed to us through media. At the same time, this is the China that we are familiar, swimmers at Houhai, kids standing behind the rusty brick walls, elderly under a tree in a park, these are actually all the things that we encounter in China everyday.
The photographer follows his personal preference by utilizing monotone in this series. On realism people and scenes he adds an effect of pinhole camera, which is characterized by dark from the side of the photo that fades when it comes towards the center. On the background’s visual rough texture characterized by graininess, human figures are thrown by a slab of whiteness. Human figures’ fade away like they are being scotched by a poisonous white sun. The aura of human figures that was already eliminated by the possibility of photography multiplication is further weakened by the wiping off part of their face outlines. The huaman figures in the pictures are devastated to be the backgrounds of the backgrounds behind them.
The title “Chinese Dreamers” reveals that the grassroots in the pictures are actually in dreams, they are in dreams not because they are dreaming, but for the fact that they are, placed, or misplaced, into somebody’s dreams, or the whole country’ s dreams of good future. In these dreams some people found their bliss and some are scalded by the overheated reality: Like Yang Yi, the balladmonger who wandered around museums and universities, was still swooped by the cops when he gave his engrossing tunes that he leant from the north of Shannxi in the era of the rising of the economy. This set of pictures unveils how these grassroots are trapped in some other people’s dream through one of photography’ nature, immobility.
The power of photography, is “measured’ by the extent of how it nullifies the reality and creates its own, it is a process from making replica to creation. The strength of Chinese Dreamers comes from eliminating all others’ Weltanschauung and creating its own China by photographic skills and dissecting the reality.
posted by 花男 at 12:31 AM
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