The Chinese

by Liu Zheng, Christopher Phillips

In 1994, Chinese artist Liu Zheng conceived of an ambitious photographic project called The Chinese, which occupied him for seven years and carried him throughout China. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux, providing a startling vision of the deep-rooted historical forces and cultural attitudes that continue to shape China and its people. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations. His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying. This is the first monograph of his work to appear outside of China and accompanies Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China, a major exhibition at the International Center of Photography, New York.

Genres: Photography

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 2, 2004

Reviews

[David Rothwell · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Chinese is an incredible piece of work, part contradictory, part documentary. It's a subtle exploration of the archetypal Chinese traditional culture and a new wave of modernisation, often contradictory. The unique perspective of staged and documentary images, going hand in hand, as Lui Zheng found his way travelling throughout China from 1994 to 2001. Photographs depicted are not unlike the work of Diane Arbus some people clearly marginalised transsexuals; strippers; circus performers; others from the opposite spectrum and very wealthy, and a bit of working class in between, in the guise of coal miners. The work itself seems to be a prelude to Dream Shock (Steidl February 19, 2019). Though that series mainly focuses on portraiture, some photographs seem again staged and others documentary.

[Christina Wang · Rating 4 out of 5]

触目心惊。只有在打破真实性的桎梏后，摄影才可能获得对真实的真正理解。始于现实落于观念的作品。当人决定真正与自己身处的文化建立连接的时候，即担起了永远无法放下的重量。