MCLC: Huang Qingjun photo exhibit

Denton, Kirk denton.2 at osu.edu
Mon Sep 10 09:26:05 EDT 2012


MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Huang Qingjun photo exhibit
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Source: NYT (9/7/12):
http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/07/portraits-of-chinas-people-a
nd-their-possessions/

VIEW FROM ASIA
Portraits of China’s People (and Their Possessions)
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

BEIJING — In Huang Qingjun’s photographs, Chinese people stand in front of
their homes, surrounded by all of their worldly possessions. They are
starkly intimate portraits of lives in a country getting rich fast, but
one where hundreds of millions still struggle to get by.

“Belongings,” an exhibition of Mr. Huang’s work now on display in Beijing,
is meant to show people within their environment, both outside and inside
their homes, says Mr. Huang — lives lived in a fast-changing country.

“I wanted to show ordinary people. Show them in their environment and at
home, the connection,” says Mr. Huang, a tall 40-year-old from
Heilongjiang Province on the border with Russia. “Because China is a place
that is changing.”

The link between people and their possessions is apt, because above all,
China is getting richer — though that’s perhaps not the first thing a
viewer sees in the photographs, which focus on ordinary people who don’t
seem to own much.

“I’d like to photograph rich people but they don’t want to be
photographed,” Mr. Huang said during an interview in Beijing. “To see what
they have in their homes. But they don’t want us to see how much they are
worth.”

From the Daqing oilfields in the north to Guangdong Province in the south,
from small villages to large cities, the photographs are profoundly
varied. But look carefully — they invite that kind of gaze — and it
quickly becomes obvious that there’s almost always a television near the
center of the picture, close to its owners. Here are three more portraits,
taken in Daqing, in Beijing and in Changzhou, in Jiangsu Province.

Why the television?

Once a sign of wealth, a television isn’t fancy any more, says Mr. Huang,
the son of oil refinery workers from Daqing. For ordinary Chinese today,
conspicuous consumption is “a car, or an apartment,” he said.
But the television does suggest something: unifying thought.

“Television in China is run by the government and that means that they all
get the official programming,” he said.

Next year, the 10th anniversary of the start of his project, Mr. Huang
wants to revisit families to see how things have changed.

“With annual economic growth over 8 percent, I guess a lot has changed,”
he said.

The families in Mr. Huang’s portraits are not identified by name. Still,
how did he persuade people to reveal the contents of their homes to the
world, carting everything outside then back in again?

“I often won their agreement only by suggesting that if they carried
everything out then it was a great opportunity to spring-clean their house
before carrying everything back in. They liked that,” Mr. Huang said.

Mr. Huang has also taken an interest in Chinese steam trains; a collection
titled “Steam Locomotives” was shown at the German Railway Museum in
Nürnberg. China’s last steam train was decommissioned in 2005.

“Belongings” can currently be seen
<http://www.facebook.com/events/413659945348945/> at the Southern
Barbarian restaurant in Beijing.





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