bookspaperscissors:

Liu Bolin - The Real Life Invisible Man

Liu Bolin was moved to create his “Hiding in the City” series after the Chinese government destroyed Beijing artist village Suo Jia Cun in November 2005. At the time of this destruction, Liu Bolin had been working in Suo Jia Cun, which had been previously named Asia’s largest congregation of artists. Prompted by his emotional response to the demolition of this site, Liu decided to use his art as a means of silent protest, calling attention to the lack of protection Chinese artists had received from their own government. Why do you choose urban landscapes for the majority of your work? Bolin: In the development of Chinese society, we experienced movements which were against humanity and purged people’s minds. I chose to camouflage my body into the environment because this way, people will pay more attention to the background’s social property, and the meaning of my body disappeared in this environment as an individual. In one aspect, my works record the history of the development of Chinese society. Concern about the situation of Chinese reality is one important theme of my works. I am trying to ask, “How does our society develop? What are the problems in our society? Where is our direction leading?” How long does the average photo take and what is the process? Bolin: To finish one work, it will take 3-4 hours. All the painting and photography work is finished by one of my assistants. My work is for me to stand still there. Some people would ask: you are not the one who does the painting, or shot the work, how can it be your work? But I was the one who chose which site we should use, and which assistant helps me to do the painting, or the shot. Before I started HITC (“Hiding in the City”), I would choose some sites as back-ups, then choose one of them as the place to shoot the photo. Before we start work, I take a photo of me standing in front of the site. I put my portrait on every background digitally before real production starts, in order to show my assistant the ideas and tell them how to proceed. We pay attention to every single detail, every line and color. My assistant and I communicate throughout the process, in order to get the best image we can. I then analyze which part is most important part, which has to be finished first, and also I need to guide them to make the color choices so it is the same as the background. Then we start to paint. I have to paint myself in the same color as the background, and more importantly I have to make the lines connect with those of the background. More here

Perhaps even more amazing than the work itself is to see such creativity in response to such oppression.

oldtobegin:

theastralcity:

Inspired by another post here on Tumblr, I decided to look into the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong a bit more, it truly was one of the most amazing and terrifying places on earth.  Being slightly smaller than an NFL stadium, the structure was built of 350 smaller interconnected buildings and hosted, at its peak, a population density of 5 million people per square mile.

To put those numbers in perspective, this would be like taking the entire population of metro Philadelphia, the 4th largest in the US, and putting it in 1 square mile instead of 1,744.

The area was also largely ungoverned and unregulated.  Factories, apartments, schools, temples, churches, shops, cafes, hotels and almost anything else one could imagine were housed within the structure that never had a full blueprint of it done. Buildings were built onto buildings, expanded, rebuilt, and re-purposed as needed without a central authority of any kind.

Within the structure, natural light was almost non-existent, and an unknown number of miles of jury-rigged wires provided electricity to everything.  Water constantly dripped down to the lower levels from both rain and leaking pipes, while garbage filled every passage.  A constant yellow haze filled the structure and there were never any government safety inspections.

The Kowloon Walled City was demolished in the early 1990s as part of the deal that returned Hong Kong to the Chinese from the British. The entire area is now a park.

I find places like this fascinating, it is just incredible what we, humans, build and live in. This, hive, for lack of a better term, was one of the most interesting structures I’ve yet looked at.

For a documentary shot inside of the Kowloon Walled City, check here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lby9P3ms11w

(via samhumphries)

psychodiagnostik:

Prix Pictet-winning series Yangtze, The Long River by Nadav Kander

Artist statement

Yangtze, The Long River 

The Yangtze River, which forms the premise to this body of work, is the main artery that flows 4100miles (6500km) across china, travelling from its furthest westerly point in Qinghai Province to Shanghai in the east. The river is embedded in the consciousness of the Chinese, even for those who live thousands of miles from the river. It plays a significant role in both the spiritual and physical life of the people.

More people live along its banks than live in the USA, one in every eighteen people on the planet.

Using the river as a metaphor for constant change, I have photographed the landscape and people along its banks from mouth to source.

Importantly for me I worked intuitively, trying not to be influenced by what I already knew about the country. I wanted to respond to what I found and felt and to seek out the iconography that allowed me to frame views that make the images unique to me.

After several trips to different parts of the river, it became clear that what I was responding to and how I felt whilst being in china was permeating into my pictures; a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself. China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past in the wake of the sheer force of its moving “forward” at such an astounding and unnatural pace. A people scarring their country and a country scarring its people.

I felt a complete outsider and explained this pictorially by “stepping back” and showing humans dwarfed by their surroundings. Common man has little say in China’s progression and this smallness of the individual is alluded to in the work.

Although it was never my intention to make documentary pictures, the
sociological context of this project is very important and ever present. The displacement of 3 million people in a 600km stretch of the River and the effect on humanity when a country moves towards the future at pace are themes that will inevitably be present within the work.

A Chinese man who I became friends with whilst working on the project reiterated what many Chinese people feel: “ Why do we have to destroy to develop?” He explained how in Britain many of us could revisit the place of our childhood, knowing that it will be much the same, it will remind us of our families and upbringing. In China that is virtually impossible, the scale of development has left most places unrecognisable, “Nothing is the same. We can’t revisit where we came from because it no longer exists.”

China’s landscape both economically and physically is changing daily. These are photographs that can never be taken again.

psychodiagnostik:

Liyuan Library in Huairou, China by Li Xiaodong Architects

This is the most beautiful library in the world!