Shooting Wide Open

Weng Naiqiang

A slim little book I picked up last year at 798 Photo. If you’ve ever see the drawings in elementary Chinese textbooks, some of the scenes Weng documented seem very familiar. I always thought those were idealizations, but from these photos, it looks like plenty were actually enacted.

So sad that this year I won’t be in Beijing to pick up some more stuff…

Ma Hongjie

Yao Lu

I bought a poster of his from 798 Photo. I’d see his work before on the web, but online it is not impressive to me at all. The prints he has up in the gallery are so much more striking. The key is that you get a lot of detail when you lean closer, but on the web leaning closer doesn’t really get you anything more. Without the detail, the concept looks a little heavyhanded – “yeah, yeah, traditional landscape painting style approximated by photo composites of the artifacts of very modern land development, etc…”

His book runs into the same problem as web viewing because for some reason he chose to print small despite, confusingly, a large book size.

Li Lin

Li Lin’s Disappearing Landscape is one of the 798 Photo books I picked up. The book is divided into two parts – Wetland, frames of disappearing natural wetlands, and Artificial Landscape, frames of what will conceivably replace them. The more conventional landscapes of Wetland are interesting, but I really like the strangeness of the Artificial Landscapes, which was shot in Dongying city in Shandong province at what looks to be one of those cheesy amusement parks so characteristic of China.

The introduction by Liu Shuyong is also printed in an English version. The translation is a little awkward sometimes, but my Chinese is not so great, so it will have to do:

Artificial Landscape is a sarcastic photographic series that criticizes the artificial garden scenes installed in modern cities. The reinforced concrete structures imitating traditional gardens are mixed with [nationalist] dreams of political power blocs, and the dependence of commercial capital to the will to power. The crude, childish artificial landscape reflects people’s shallow understanding of Chinese characteristics.

I would say that despite the nationalism and the cheese, while more jaded folks are critical, there is a bit of naive enthusiasm and hopefulness in the reception some people give to these places. He goes to a bit of an extreme – the essay is titled “The Spawning of ‘Flowers of Evil,’ ” which, I have to admit, is an arresting turn of phrase.

If you are ever in Beijing you should pick up some of 798 Photo’s books. I think there are some slight tone and color problems with some of the prints but the shorter ones go for around 100 RMB, which is $13-15, so I can’t complain.