Sixty ways of looking at China: in the past decade, photography in the People's Republic has become a full-blown art form for the first time in half a century. Now two noted scholar-curators offer a major show-and, below, a wide-ranging discussion-designed to acquaint Western audiences with cutting-edge Chinese photographers and video-makers |
Featuring the work of some 60 artists, "Between Past and
Future: New Photography and Video from China," opens June
11 at the International Center of Photography and the Asia Society
in New York, before beginning a two-year international tour.
Here the show's organizers, Wu Hung, independent curator and
professor of Chinese art history at the University of Chicago,
and ICP curator Christopher Phillips, discuss their four-part
exhibition and the dynamic nature of the, contemporary photo-and-video
scene in China.
Richard Vine: I think one thing that will surprise many viewers
of your show is the newness, in several senses, of the work displayed.
Can you give us a brief account of the recent emergence of "conceptual" photography
in China? Is there a correlation between the social conditions
of this work's production and the nature of its imagery and themes?
Wu Hung: This is something that I discuss in great detail in
my catalogue essay. Basically, a major shift took place in 1997,
when the photographers Liu Zheng and Rong Rong published the
third issue of New Photo, a periodical devoted to experimental
photography. Up until then, advanced image-making had been a
sort of negation process, in which artists defined themselves
simply by doing things that were contrary to mainstream expectations.
But now, under the influence of Conceptual-art theories, they
began to think of their work as deliberate constructs, representing
ideas as much as objects-in-the-world. A new discussion group
started up, the Every Saturday Photo Salon, and the title of
its first exhibition became more or less synonymous with the
emerging esthetic: "New Photographic Image."
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