Contemporary Chinese Photography

The Cultural Revolution, Chinese Economic Reform, One Child Policy, and the 1989 Movement of Democratic Change not only affected the development of the People’s Republic of China but also influenced the generation who was born after 1979 at the time the One-Child Policy began. My photography exhibition - “The One” presents the perspective of an only child born into this regime. This exhibition narrates the birth and rebirth of an only child who was not privileged by the experience or education of the Tiananmen Square Protest in 1989. The work attempts to recreate stories from fragmented memories that incorporate my fantasies. This exhibition represents the influence of the one-child policy on my parent's generation and mine. In addition to these restrictions it portrays elements of my desire to be unhindered from unexplained political ideologies, government cultural propaganda and bureaucracy.

In reform era China, demolition and rubble have become unavoidable presence in most major cities. Reifying “the menace to the city and its memory” (Yomi Braester), demolition has attracted many artists and filmmakers, who have incorporated it in their works. This dissertation contributes to recent studies of the ruin imaginary in Chinese art and visual culture, and to the emerging body of literature on Chinese photography with an analysis of experimental photographers who have engaged with urban demolition.

The predominance of the theme of urban demolition responds, first and foremost, to the fact that urban rubble has been ubiquitous, enduring and highly visible. In this sense, this dissertation sketches the institutional and legal framework regulating land development in China, to account for the particular dynamics responsible to the emergence and visibility of ruinous landscapes. At the same time, the focus on artistic experimentalism serves to focus on the ways in which the different artists have transformed demolition sites into ruins, going beyond a documentary or activist depiction of demolition. In this sense, the dissertation also partakes in the current transdisciplinar revision of ruins studies, which foregrounds the constructedness of ruins as a discourse and critical category.

The dissertation examines over 40 photographic series spanning from the early 1990s to the present, detects their aesthetic and discursive strategies, and divides them in different chapters according to their chronological sequence, and the commonalities in their approach to demolition. In addition to the immediate context of contemporary photography from China, the dissertation also explores the connections of contemporary photographic projects with the long aesthetical tradition around the ruin, and in particular with pioneering photo-conceptualist artists of the post-war period who rekindled its artistic value in tune with the contemporary context of mass-production and consumption.

After analyzing the different photographic works, the dissertation highlights conceptualism, performativity, and digital technologies as the main strategies for the creation of ruins. It also posits a temporal evolution in the style and attitude of the artists, with an exploration of the newest photographic works on demolition concurrent with the writing of this work.

Questo documento è l'elaborato finale della mia tesi triennale in Lingue e Letterature Straniere. Analizza la figura di Ren Hang, fotografo e poeta contemporaneo cinese. Il primo capitolo, secondo analisi psicoanalitiche e sociali, prende in esame il suo blog online, nel quale egli descrive dettagliatamente la depressione della quale soffriva e che lo portò a 28 anni a togliersi la vita. Il secondo capitolo riguarda invece alcune sue poesie personalmente tradotte ed infine il terzo capitolo tratta della sua produzione fotografica, la quale suscitò numerose controversie e venne considerata "pornografica" e conseguentemente censurata in Cina.

Mit 17 Jahren sah Xing Danwen in einem der damals weit verbreiteten staatlichen Fotomagazinen das Bild das ihr Leben verändern sollte: eine schwarz-weiss Fotografie einer Wüste. Während ihrer Zeit an der Xi'aner Akademie der Künste, an welcher Xing Danwen die klassischen Techniken der sozial-realistischen Ölmalerei erlernte, gab es jedoch nur fünf Bücher über Fotografie. Und als sie im Alter von 20 Jahren nach Peking kam um an der renommierten Zentralen Akademie der Künste Ölmalerei und folkloristische Kunst zu studieren, fand sie auch nicht viel mehr Material um Ihre Neugierde zu befriedigen.

Since the beginning of the new millennium a new generation of photographers in China decided to take a journey in the reverse direction, to return from the Chinese big cities or from abroad and travel back to the places of their origin. Even though each of them developed their works with a personal approach and depicted particular scenes, they all focused on the same direction of their path: returning home.
I refer to photographers such as Zeng Han, Su Jiehao, Mu Ge, Zhu Lanqing, Zhang Wenxin, You Li and Zhang Xiao. Photographers with different origin and different age, who seem to have decided to undertake the same path.
I do not want to suggest a new pattern and neither introduce a new tendency in contemporary Chinese photography. But I want to show how these photographic works shared common intentions and feelings in a period of irrefutable changes.

Resumen:
Los conceptos de alteridad y mismidad, presentes en la filosofía desde sus orígenes, se han convertido en debate relevante desde la segunda mitad del siglo XX. Cuestiones como la representación del Otro, la autorreferencialidad o la construcción hegemónica de los regímenes historicistas han copado los estudios postcoloniales.

Ahora bien, dicha dicotomía alteridad-mismidad es puesta en entredicho en la actualidad por las identidades fluidas provocadas por los flujos migratorios. A través de la serie “I do, I do, I do” del fotógrafo Chien-Chi Chang, miembro de la agencia Magnum, el presente artículo pretende teorizar sobre la hibridación de los conceptos de alteridad y mismidad a través de una nueva conceptualización de la temporalidad.



Abstract:
The concepts of otherness and sameness, present in philosophy since its origin, have been a subject of controversy since the mid-twentieth century. Issues such as the representation of the Other, the autorreferenciality and the historicity have ruled postcolonial studies.

But this dichotomy sameness-otherness is put in question today by fluid identities caused by migration. Through the analysis of “I do, I do, I do”, a photography serie taken by Chien-Chi Chang, a member of Magnum Agency, the paper aims to hybridize the concepts of otherness and sameness through a new conceptualization of temporality.

Tom R. Chambers put this photo documentary project together focusing on the denizens of Longhu Town, China, 2004. He collaborated with Zhao Zhenhai, a Chinese documentary photographer to mount a two-person show, “Zhao/Chambers Joint Photo Exhibition”. Zhao's photos cover the past twenty years (1984-2004) throughout China, and Chambers' photos are recent (2004). This was the first time in Henan Province, China for a Chinese and American photographer to come together to offer an East-West perspective on the Chinese People and Culture.