Return Home: Photographic

Report of a Journey

Retorno a casa: reportaje

fotográco de un viaje

ROBERTO FIGLIULO

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Barcelona, España

roberto.gliulo@uab.cat

Resumen: Desde el principio del nuevo milenio una nueva generación de

fotógrafos en China decidió embarcarse en un viaje en dirección contraria,

volver desde las grandes metrópolis chinas o desde el extranjero y viajar a

sus lugares de origen. Aunque cada uno de ellos desarrolla sus trabajos

con un toque personal y representa escenas particulares, todos se centran

en la misma dirección de su viaje: volver a casa.

Me reero a fotógrafos como Zeng Han曾翰, Su Jiehao 苏杰浩, Mu Ge

木格, Zhu Lanqing朱岚清, Zhang Wenxin 张文心 and Zhang Xiao 张

晓. Fotógrafos con diferentes orígenes y edades, que parece han decidido

emprender el mismo camino.

No se quiere sugerir un nuevo patrón, ni introducir una nueva tendencia

en la fotografía contemporánea china. Sino quiero mostrar como estos

trabajos fotográcos comparten intenciones y sentimientos comunes en

un periodo de irrefutable cambio.

Palabras clave: Fotografía china, Regreso a casa, Sentido de lugar,

Hogar, Desarrollo urbano.

Abstract: Since the beginning of the new millennium a new generation

of photographers in China decided to take a journey in the reverse

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

direction, to return from the Chinese big cities or from abroad and travel

back to the places of their origin. Even though each of them developed

their works with a personal approach and depicted particular scenes, they

all focused on the same direction of their path: returning home.

I refer to photographers such as Zeng Han曾翰, Su Jiehao 苏杰浩, Mu

Ge 木格, Zhu Lanqing朱岚清, Zhang Wenxin 张文心and Zhang Xiao

张晓. Photographers with dierent origin and dierent age, who seem to

have decided to undertake the same path.

I do not want to suggest a new pattern and neither introduce a new

tendency in contemporary Chinese photography. But I want to show

how these photographic works shared common intentions and feelings in

a period of irrefutable changes.

Keywords: Chinese Photography, Return, Sense of place, Homeland,

Urban development.

Citar como: Figliulo, R. (2022). Return Home: Photographic Report of

a Journey. Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos, 1(1), 122-146.

Fecha de recepción: 31-08-2021 | Fecha de aceptación: 14-10-2021

123

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

124

Return Home: Photographic Report of a Journey

Photography usually narrates new paths to discover new and unex-

plored worlds. Sometimes it is the attempt to show a new point of view

about something that has already been immortalized by cameras many

times before. In this article I will analyse a few photographic projects

which are a sort of travel photography. The trip in this case, is in the in-

verted direction. The authors that I will present embark on a journey to

and through their own original places. They will not move through mys-

terious routes because they will travel on paths that they have already been

on in the past. It is a spatial journey, because it is from the places where

they currently live to their childhood places, from where they left years

ago, in order to make their dreams come true. Similarly, it is also a journey

through time, to rediscover their own past, or at least of what is still left

intact of their past.

The photographic medium becomes the ideal artistic medium to doc-

ument the journey. Like a prosthesis of the photographer’s body, or the

extension of their own experiential capabilities, it is perfect to represent

the artist’s intimate world. The photographs of these artists are a testimo-

nial of what their childhood places consisted of: objects, people, rooms,

buildings, animals, etc. They work as traces of their places and their past.

Sometimes the photographs are made in an eort to create an eternal

trace of these elements, sometimes the artists are moved by the need to

understand their origins more profoundly or sometimes they try to give a

specic identity to their places and to themselves.

In this article I will present photographic projects that have the same

goal and that have been created between 2005 and 2015. The temporal

coincidence is probably due to the great awareness of the losses in the so-

cial and cultural fabric in China, caused by the frenetic race to economic

development. These losses are present in the everyday landscapes and in

the life of those people that did not get on board of the train of progress.

They are often the main protagonists of the photographic works we will

see. Apart from the social critique background, we will nd deeply per-

sonal works, representations of the artists’ intimate world.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

125

One of the rst to undertake this journey was Zeng Han曾翰 (b.1974):

“One spring day in 2005, I went back to the place where I was born 30

years ago”.

From his journey, he created the series “Leave and Return”

(Liqu yu guilai离去与归来), a deeply intimate journey through his own

memory.

Then I will analyse You Li’s 游莉 (b.1978) photographs in the series

“Latitude of Silence” (Jijing de weidu 寂静的维度), taken between 2007

and 2009, that “are about where I come from and times of indecision”.

A project that is both a work of documentation and a personal reconnec-

tion process with places.

The same case applies to Su Jiehao苏杰浩 (b.1988), who after “spent a

few years living a nomadic life in China, trying to escape from the sorrow

of my mother’s sudden death”,

chose to start the series “Borderland” (Bi-

anjiang边疆), that brought him back to his childhood places.

Zhang Wenxin张文心 (b.1989) has a dierent approach in “Five

Nights, Aquarium” (Wu ge yewan, shuizuguan五个夜晚, 水族馆)

from 2014, with a precise goal: “I try to reconstruct my inner journey

from trips I’ve made between my home country China and San Francisco

during these two years”.

Zhang develops her photographic journey on

the thin line that separates ction and reality.

“In 2005, I visited my hometown, a place I am as familiar with as the

back of my hand”,

are Mu Ge’s木格 (b.1979) words that introduce the

series “Going Home” (Huijia回家), nally completed in 2009. His view

1 Zeng Han, “Leave and Return”, accessed March 22, 2017, http://www.zeng-

han.com/index.php?/projects/leave-and-return-2003-05/.

2 Quoted in Pixy Liao, “China Week: You Li – Latitude of Silence”, Lens Cratch,

January 10, 2014, http://lenscratch.com/2014/01/youli-latitude-silence/.

3 Tom Griggs, “Interview: Su Jiehao”, Fototazo, January 6, 2015, http://www.

fototazo.com/2015/06/interview-jiehao-su.html.

4 Zhang Wenxin, “Five Nights, Aquarium: Statement”, accessed August 6, 2021,

http://www.zhangwenxin.com/fna.

5 Mu Ge, “Back Home (2005-2009)”, Private – International Review of Photo-

graphy, no.50, autumn 2010, p.6.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

126

is more critical, despite an intimate and poetic style, because he is trav-

eling through the lands of a displaced community of people, after the

building of the Three Gorge Dam along the Yangtze River.

Among the most recent works I will analyse Zhu Lanqing朱岚清

(b.1991). In her series “A Journey in Reverse Direction” (Fuxiang de

lücheng负向的旅程) created between 2013 and 2015, she says that

“shooting hometown seems like a journey in reverse direction”,

and then

arms that these pictures are “leading me to the vague memories in dark

and the bottom of my heart”.

And nally, we will see the exhibition “About my Hometown” present-

ed at the Blindspot Gallery in Hong Kong, including the latest work from

Zhang Xiao 张晓 (b.1981). In this exhibition the artist focuses on “his

experience of homecoming after a prolonged absence”.

I am not looking at a particular trend, and there is not a direct link

between these artists. All the authors that I will analyse have many things

in common, like the decision to leave their birth places to continue their

studies or nd a job inside or outside the country. These artists also share

this path with a large part of the Chinese population, which has been

obligated to leave their original places in search of a better workplace and

better life conditions. This population, normally labelled as “uctuant”

(liudong 流动), goes back home at least once a year from the places where

they work, often thousands of kilometres away. After all, these photo-

graphic works are not so dierent from these trips of reunication with

the original places and the loved ones, that year after year take place in

what is a sort of national ritual. So, the idea of mobility is deeply related to

these photographic projects. Their life experience is bound to the experi-

ence of migration. Those artworks would not have been possible without

6 Zhu Lanqing, “A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015”,

accessed March 22, 2017, http://www.zhulanqing.com/book/a-journey-in-rever-

se-direction/.

7 Zhu Lanqing, “A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015”.

8 Chun, Mimi, “Foreword”, in About My Hometown – Zhang Xiao (Hong Kong:

Blindspot Gallery, 2015) 1.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

127

this rst step of distancing themselves from their homeplaces and looking

for new places. As Russell King arms: “Migration is a dislocation from

one place and a physical attachment to another – although the emotional

attachment may well remain with the place of origin. At an individual

level, migrants’ experience of displacement raises complex psychological

questions about their own existence and self-identity”.

In the photographic works that we will see the authors are looking for

a “place” that identies them or where they identify themselves with, in

an attempt to dene or consecrate their rootedness. Compared with the

trend of the “Native Soil Art” from the eighties, we can see an import-

ant change: it is not about a search for the historical and cultural roots

anymore, but rather the personal roots, that are the foundation of the

identity of the individual. The artists escape from the need to represent

great narratives, and focus on the immediacy, the everyday, the intimate

and personal world.

The Chinese scholar Yi-Fu Tuan arms that a “place” is born from

pause, as it allows the creation of a shared system of values and feelings.

In a society of constant movement, as is the contemporary, which is per-

sistently building and destroying spaces and places, the individual is look-

ing for stable and established “places”. The authors that I will analyse in

this article seem to try to recreate a link with their original places, from

where they once left to move to new localities. It does not seem like an es-

cape from the new places, where they currently live, but rather a personal

search of their own rootedness. Photography becomes the ideal instru-

ment to register these elements of the everyday life that allows to build

an idea of place, a sense of place. The indexical feature of photography, its

direct relation with the referent, allows to reexperience something that is

not there anymore.

9 Russel King, “Migration, Globalization and Place”, in A Place in the World?:

Places, Cultures and Globalization, eds. Doreen B. Massey and Pat Jess (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 1995), 7.

10 Yi-fu Tuan, Space and Place – The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: Uni-

versity of Minnesota Press, 2014) 138.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

128

In these photographers’ work there is a sort of struggle against time,

where photography could illusorily help. They seem to want to create an

archive for their memory, because they will have to leave again, far away

from their land.

A personal point of view

In 2015 Gu Zheng conceives the category “Photography of Places” in

a short essay dedicated to Zhang Xiao, that was the introduction to the

exhibition held in the gallery Blindspot in Hong Kong, titled “About My

Hometown” (Guanyu guxiang 關於故鄉). Gu Zheng, analysing Zhang

Xiao’s works, arms: “I feel that after experiencing an expansive (or even

surging, at times) ‘spatial turn’, contemporary Chinese photography may

be on the verge of a new phase, which is how to return to a particular

‘place’ through photography”

. And then, he adds: “Perhaps such pho-

tography may already be called the ‘Photography of Place’, and Zhang’s

works about his hometown can be seen as the inception of the ‘Photogra-

phy of Place’ in China”.

First of all, I want to avoid the need to label each novelty in the Chinese

artistic panorama and avoid also generalizing an always rich and heteroge-

neous photographic production. But Gu Zheng is right when arming

that in the recent photographic production a change has taken place, the

need to analyse the world starting from a personal point of view, and not

from the need to “perform the Nation”

that has often characterized the

Chinese experimental and vanguard artistic production.

As scholar Yi-Fu Tuan arms that: “Place is not only a fact to be ex-

plained in the broader frame of space, but it is also a reality to be claried

11 Gu Zheng, “From Coastline to Hometown: On Zhang Xiao’s Artistic Creati-

on and Its Shift”, in About My Hometown – Zhang Xiao, (Hong Kong: Blindspot

Gallery, 2015) 8.

12 Gu, 8.

13 Robin Visser, Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Post-socia-

list China, (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010) 133.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

129

and understood from the perspectives of the people who have given it

meaning”.

In this new way of approaching the “Chinese world” there

is the common intention to show reality through a personal lter, of the

artist or of the people portrayed.

In the exhibition “About My Hometown”, the latest works from Zhang

Xiao are gathered, and even though they are based on the same topic, they

dier in technique and style: in the series “Shift” (Yi 移), made between

2012 and 2015, he creates collages using emulsied paper extracted from

Polaroids; for the series “Eldest Sister”, “Relatives” and “Three Sisters”

(Dajie大姐, Qinqi亲戚, San zimei三姊妹), Zhang recovers family por-

traits made by “peddler photographers”; in the series “Living” (Huozhe

活着) Zhang re-enacts the action of his mother who, in order to get her

pension, sent pictures of herself holding the current daily newspaper to

the authorities, so that she could proof that she was still alive; and nally,

“Home Theater” (Jiating yinyuan家庭影院) is a mixed installation, con-

nected to the author’s childhood memories.

The creation of these works, and the exhibition that gathered them,

has many similarities with the works that we will see below. In Zhang’s

case, after he walked thousands of kilometres to produce his previous

works,

he decided to go back “to reacquaint himself with the homeland

that had become unfamiliar through photography”.

It is always through

photography that he tries to recreate this link, even though it is with a

new approach of the medium. The exhibition gathered dierent works

made with dierent techniques, which denote, compared to his previous

works, a shift to conceptual art.

In the series “Shift”, Zhang uses polaroids to reproduce people, objects,

building and animals from his homeplace, the city of Yantai in Shandong

14 Yi-fu Tuan, “Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective”, in Philosophy in Geo-

graphy, vol.20, eds. Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olsson (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Pu-

blishing Company, 1979) 387.

15 As in the case of the series “Coastline”, when he traveled thousands of kilome-

ters along the Chinese coastline.

16 Chun, Mimi, “Foreword”, 1.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

130

province. The series is made with an instant camera: Zhang lifts the emul-

sion from the instant lm, then he applies it to paper. The resulting image

is composed of one or dierent photographs, in this last case creating a

kind of collage. The idea of place is deeply rooted in this photographic

series and Zhang seems to suggest that all the feelings related to home-

place could not be represented in an ordinary photographic way. In the

“Shift” series we can nd elements that we will see represented in other

works in this article, elements that are connected to memories of the art-

ist’s homeplace: people and familiars, objects and details, buildings and

landscapes, etc [Figure 1]. Zhang uses polaroid because it has the intrinsic

capability to capture the moment without intermediate passages: as the-

ories on indexicality sustain, there is a continuity between the referent

and its representation. But the use of collage, that partially breaks with

the indexical realism of the photography, allows the artist to modify the

traces of his past in testimonies, in something personal, and not cold and

objectivised as it could be if registered through a photographic apparatus;

in something that could be closer to the substance of which memories are

made, always on the point of vanishing.

One of the rst authors to undertake this journey back home was Zeng

Han, photographer and independent curator, now residing in Guang-

zhou. At the beginning of his career, his work is characterized by a vision

of his nearest world with a personal perspective, as can be seen in the pho-

tographs of the series “Hi! Where are you going?” (Hei! Ni qu nar? 嘿！

你去哪儿？), taken between 1998 and 2001. After that, he focuses on

a critical vision of the new Chinese society and on the urban change of

the country, especially in works like “Soul Stealer” (Jiao hun 叫魂), made

from 2006 to 2008, and “Hyperreality China” (Chaozhenshi Zhongguo超

真实中国), from 2005 to 2011.

Zeng Han concludes, from 2003 to 2005, the series “Leave and Re-

turn”. Regarding this project, he states:

One spring day in 2005, I went back to the place where I was born 30

years ago. What I have been looking for all this time emerged slowly when

I saw my grandmother’s last smile and her yellow con in the courtyard.

Since I have been moving between towns and cities, dierent living envi-

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

131

ronments and accents, and therefore I could never really get a clear conr-

mation of my identity.

The uncertainty that his research is based on is easily read in the rst

photograph of the series: the horizon is as blurred as the entire image, but

a dashboard of a car can be recognized, and a paved road that stretches to

a not entirely clear destiny, while in the background a sunset or a sunrise

lights the sky [Figure 2].

The series consists in fragments of dierent localities, linked by the

need to nd an identity lost behind somewhere in these places. We can

nd portrayed inner spaces completely empty, without the human pres-

ence, where the objects seem to remember a sense of place. The most inti-

mate photograph is probably the one portraying his dying grandmother,

where the disappearance of an important place is that which a beloved

one embodies. Zeng’s work is probably the most personal and nostalgic

of those analysed in this article. And we can consider it the most conclud-

ed, in the sense of denitive, created in a circular way. It starts with the

photograph of a car, with its blurred horizon, and ends with a last picture

where he shows a totally dark enclosed space. A ladder is an invitation to

go out through a bright opening in the ceiling. Zeng Han’s photographic

series seems an escape from a past that he does not identify with anymore,

“after all our the years of isolation and expansion, this so-called ‘nostalgia’

and the search for our origins are an imaginary dream and a lie for our

generation”.

This path in reverse direction, questioning the concept of

identity (genben 根本) and nostalgia (xiangchou乡愁), as they are prod-

ucts of a narrative imposed from the top, that have no relationship with

the experience of the individual in his daily life.

The vague and blurred pictures that Zeng Han shows are the result of

a deep personal research. As he himself arms in issue 16 of “City Pic-

torial” (Chengshi huabao城市画报) magazine from 2005, dedicated to

“Personal Photography” in China: “Pick up your cameras. Photography

17 Zeng Han, “Leave and Return”.

18 Zeng Han, “Leave and Return”.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

132

is your personal life; your personal life is photography!”

There is there-

fore a tight link with his photographic production and his personal life.

Zeng Han belongs to the “Personal Photography” trend, which devel-

oped in China mostly from the 2000s, with photographers such as Lin

Zhi Peng (a.k.a 223), Sun Yanchu or the duo Birdhead. Photographers

whose works are characterized by a “lack of interest in grand narratives

and a concern instead with subject matter that was directly related to their

everyday lives”.

Indeed, it does not mean that this approach did not exist before: with-

out going too far back in the past, in the middle 90s there is the example of

Rong Rong. About his photographic work, dedicated to the Beijing East

Village, Wu Hung writes: “their signicance is actually threefold, histor-

ical, artistic, and autobiographical”.

Rong Rong undertakes the same

path as the authors that are analysed here: when he was forced to go back

to his native Fujian after the premature end of the Beijing East Village. In

his parents’ house, he took many pictures of the old bed, where the whole

family used to sleep together. A journey that brought back memories of

childhood moments. This is a crucial moment for him, when he becomes

aware of himself and resumes his career as an artist, once back in Beijing.

Places made of people and objects

You Li lives in Shenyang and creates the series “Latitude of Silence”

between 2007 and 2009, occasionally going to the Northern border of

the country, where she grew up. As the title suggests, silence prevails in

her pictures: winter landscapes covered by an imperturbable grey sky;

workers on the wire of a power line, suspended as circus funambulist

over an empty street; stray lonely dogs moving through muddy streets,

snowy lands and mountains of rubbish; empty rooms, where the out of

19 Gu Zheng, “A Theory of Chinese Personal Photograpy”, in 3030 New Photo-

graphy in China, ed. John Millichap (Hong Kong: 3030press, 2006) 15.

20 Claire Roberts, Photography and China (London: Reaktion Books, 2013) 178.

21 Wu Hung, Rong Rong’s East Village 1993-1998 (New York: Chambers Fine

Art, 2003) 9.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

133

place bed sheet suggests the presence and absence of the people who live

there; railway stations covered by snow, where deep solitude emanates

from both trains and men. You Li arms: “This series of photographs

present a somewhat unrealistic Northern China, which probably exists in

the gap of my memories”.

At rst glance, one’s sensation is to be facing

a documental work, deeply realistic, but with the author’s words we un-

derstand that it is approached through a profoundly personal vision. We

do not know anymore if these intrinsically surreal places are the result of

the artist’s vision or are typical of this “latitude of silence”. There are few

portraits, mainly of young people [Figure 3], young faces that she seems

to identify herself with: “Perhaps by making peace with my life, the teen-

age rebellion toward my hometown, the confused and unsettled feelings

faded in time, replace by my acceptance, intentional and unintentional si-

lence”.

It is a sort of reconciling journey with the land that she left years

ago, an attempt to understand these places at the limit of inhospitality,

with which she is deeply linked.

Portraits are often present in the series analysed here. At a technical

level, they seem to have the same origin, the analytical point of view, dis-

tinctive of August Sander and Diane Arbus’ photographs, which evolved

with more recent photographers, members or followers of the Düsseldorf

School. This vision is characterized by distant framings where the sub-

ject, aware of being photographed, poses in clumsy positions. This pho-

tographer’s vision could be regarded as cold and distant, but referred to

the series analysed here, it is not documentary photography, because the

personal factor is fundamental. The authors’ research originates from the

personal need to return to their original places, and a part of themselves is

often embodied in the people that they portray.

The portrayed people are often relatives of them, which are the fulll-

ment of the artist’s ideal of a place. But the places embodied by people

are, as Yi-Fu Tuan asserts, “elusive and personal”,

and are not “perceived

22 Pixy Liao, “China Week: You Li – Latitude of Silence”.

23 Pixy Liao, “China Week: You Li – Latitude of Silence”.

24 Tuan, Space and Place – The Perspective of Experience, 141.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

134

as general symbols like replace, chair, bed, and living room that invite

intricate explication”.

In these portraits there is an aim of ghting this

elusiveness and x the link with these people in time, an unequal struggle

with forgetfulness.

Portraits have a lot of presence in Su Jiehao’s work, already remarkable

in his rst series “Summer’s Almost Gone”, created between 2010 and

2012. The chosen scenery is his own original places, with the purpose of

“rebuild the spiritual and mnemonic connection with my birthplace and

to search for beauty and poetic grace in ordinary life”.

The pictures that

compose this series of objects, landscapes and people create a world made

of places of belonging, linked with past memories, the result of “an inter-

twining of physical space and spiritual world”.

The photographs were

taken in a moment of his life when he moved to Beijing, where he still

resides now, to continue his photographic specialization. The title of the

work is also a reference to the short periods of holidays he spent at home,

when he took the photographs.

The photograph’s nal result is perfect; before shooting, Su carefully

chooses the subject and the composition of the picture, always following

a precise procedure. Despite this approach, his pictures are deeply person-

al, visually cold, but at the same time profoundly intimate.

His research continues in the series “Borderland”, made between 2012

and 2015.

To recover from a situation of displacement that originated

after his mother’s death, when he was still adolescent, Su undertakes a

long journey through his country: “as a way to look inward and recall

my early memories, to reect on my identity, and to search for a sense of

belonging”.

The photographic project is deeply rooted in a personal re-

25 Tuan, 141.

26 Jiehao Su, Summer’s Almost Gone, accessed March 22, 2017, http://jiehaosu.

com/summer-is-almost-gone/text/.

27 Su, Summer’s Almost Gone.

28 The title utilized for the rst exhibition of the series, held in 2014 in Actual

Size Gallery Los Angeles, was “In Search of Home: Jiehao Su’s New Work”.

29 Tom Griggs, “Interview: Su Jiehao”.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

135

search. Su reconstructs his identity through a series of urban landscapes,

people portraits and special places: “Together the images comprise a deli-

cate, phlegmatic, and melancholic meditation on my personal history”.

It can be seen through his work that he uses the camera as a way of cur-

ing his illness: “In this sense, Borderland is an intimate work of remem-

brance, tenderness, and self-consolation”.

The camera becomes a sort

of curative tool, through which he nds consolation for personal pains.

After all, the house, as a place, is symbolically connected to the places of

nursing: home becomes the ideal place to recover from an illness.

On the contrary, Zhang Wenxin’s approach is very dierent. In the

2014 series “Five Nights, Aquarium” she moves on the thin line of c-

tion and reality: “The narration of journey moves from real to imagined

spaces, exploring the boundaries between autobiography and ction”.

In Zhang’s pictures, everything is suspended in a dreamlike atmosphere,

where places and people’s faces refer to the artist’s own stories and memo-

ries. Zhang encloses these journeys, that took her from her original places

in Anhui province to the city of San Francisco, in a made up space-time

frame, a sort of story that develops in ve nights and inside an imaginary

aquarium. The artist arms: “In this aquarium, cityscapes are sh tank

decorations, people are sh, and writings are tank labels”.

In this surreal

vision of the world that surrounds her, the artist creates a microcosm,

embodied in the image of the aquarium, where she observes the action of

men/shes in this immutable scenery. The rst picture of the series is an

urban landscape in a grey day, made of grey buildings and an abandoned

plot full of rubbish and weed. Every night in the series is matched with a

story, with places related to her own memory. In the rst night, she talks

about her relationship with her hometown, which evokes a strong feeling

of alienation. A particular place appears in the rst lines: “I used to stand

30 Tom Griggs, “Interview: Su Jiehao”.

31 Tom Griggs, “Interview: Su Jiehao”.

32 Zhang, Five Nights, Aquarium: Statement.

33 Zhang, Five Nights, Aquarium: Statement.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

136

for hours on top of a giant ring-shaped foot-bridge on snowy evenings”.

From here one can only imagine other places.

The other stories are not related to the photographs, there is not a

direct link between the written text and the pictures that are presented.

Everything represented in the work, people or places, objects or animals,

is like an abstract -but at the same time specic- collage of places, bound

by the intimate reection of the author, located on the ephemeral border

between reality and ction.

Objects are other recurrent elements in these authors’ pictures. As Yi-

Fu Tuan sustains, “enchanted images of the past are evoked not so much

by the entire building, which can only be seen, as by its components and

furnishing, which can be touched and smelled as well”.

These objects

seem insignicant in the everyday use, but they become, because of physi-

cal and temporal distance, a sort of totem of the authors’ memory.

The rooms they photograph are often empty, with only objects or fur-

niture lling the space. The objects become therefore a kind of physical

trace left by the people that live there. For the artist, these objects are di-

rectly connected to the place, people or memories of the past, even if for

us, observers of the scene, these things do not have much value apart from

the representation of everyday objects.

Original places in a changeable landscape

The analysed works in this article are the result of a shift in the way of

seeing the world by some photographers: leaving aside the documentary

component of the medium, and the cold analysis of the changes under

way in the Chinese society, in favour of a personal approach, an intimate

vision, not only of the closest world, but also of the country’s reality, a

vision both particular and collective.

In his essay dedicated to Personal Photography in China, Gu Zheng ad-

vises that it “needs to evolve to express something that is useful to society or

34 Zhang Wnxin, Five Nigths, Aquarium, accessed August 6, 2021, http://www.

zhangwenxin.com/fna.

35 Tuan, Space and Place – The Perspective of Experience, 144.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

137

face its demise”.

This warning almost seemed to be heard by the authors

analysed here, and so when they made their journey, in addition to using a

personal point of view, they also made critical reections about the under-

going changes of the country during the last decades.

In his statement from the series “Going Home”, made between 2005

and 2009, Mu Ge talks about the encounter with his own home: “My

home was practically the same: a sofa in the shadow, furniture covered

with dust. But the decorations on the wall suddenly had a sad poetic

sense. The home harbours ignore reality. As time ies, it remains silent,

keeping the secret of life. These works are about my hometown”.

Ge lives now in Chengdu, Sichuan, but he is original from the county

of Wuxi in the municipality of Chongqing. The daily reality of this area

during the last years is directly linked to the construction of the Three

Gorges Dam. His photographic work is dedicated to the places and peo-

ple that, despite tremendous changes, seem to resist with imperturbable

strength. Mu Ge’s journey along the river Yangtze shows a landscape that

has undergone a profound process of change: “On my way home I could

see old cities soon to be buried under water as the water level rises after

the completion of the dam and new emerging cities along the river”.

De-

spite this enormous state of modication of the surroundings, the people

who he encounters in his way back home go on with their lives with pride.

Mu Ge arms: “As I was travelling home, I wanted to capture the warmth

of sunlight on the back of a young man: all the faces in front of my lens

with silent expressions that reminded me of how life struck me with awe”

[Figure 4].

Unlike the rest of the authors in this article, Mu Ge favours outdoor

spaces; he never represents an intimate or private space. The character of

this documentary series, however, blends with a deeply personal vision,

because it is not an alien eye looking at a certain detached reality. Mu Ge

36 Gu, 3030 New Photography in China, 17.

37 Mu, Private – International Review of Photography, p.6.

38 Mu, Private – International Review of Photography, p.6.

39 Mu, Private – International Review of Photography, p.6.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

138

belongs to these places, maybe not sharing destinies anymore, but he is

nevertheless linked to them through a shared past.

The photographer Zhu Lanqing, after studying in Beijing and Taipei

(now residing in Amoy city), runs away from big cities to return to her

birthplace, the Dongshan Island in Fujian: “Inevitable urban develop-

ment gives people amnesia. They often forget what existed here before.

I can only follow its pace, with my camera to ‘ght’ with these changes

in my hometown. My hometown has inuenced me and shaped me since

I was born”.

For the artist, this is a journey into the past. In fact, the

series created between 2013 and 2015 is titled “A Journey in Reverse Di-

rection”: “Shooting hometown seems like a journey in reverse direction,

leading me to the vague memories in dark and the bottom of my heart”.

Her images are composed of everyday objects, houses, open landscapes,

portraits of family members or people in the street, details of places that

recall moments of her past [Figure 5]. The series is collected in a self-edit-

ed book,

designed as a diary but also as a guide to these places:

40 Zhu, A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015.

41 Zhu, A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015.

42 As Zhu sustain in an interview released to Sheung Yiu, for Invisible Photo-

graphers Asia, the idea of this book originates after she was invited to participate

to a project created by Ren Yue, a professor of journalism at Renmin Daxue. See

Sheung Yiu, “A Journey In Reverse Direction, Zhu Lanqing”, Invisible Photo-

grapher Asia, January 27, 2016, http://invisiblephotographer.asia/2016/01/27/

zhulanqing-interview/. This initiative is been promoted in 2012 by the OPFIX

Studio, an educational project dedicated to photography established by Ren Yue

herself. After the rst edition they edited a collection of photographic pictures

contained in a box with the title “Photography as Adventure: Return Home”

(Sheying ru qiyu zhi huanxing摄影如奇遇之还乡). The photographers selected

for the publication are 31, and between them there was also Zhu Lanqing. The

next year Ren Yue whit the collaboration of the ONG Mulan realizes a parallel

project, where few women migrant workers documented in Instagram, with mo-

biles phones supplied by the organization, their own travel back home for the

Spring Festival.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

139

In my work, I use Bachimen (the bridge to Dongshan Island), home,

Food, Land, God, sea as the clue to reconstruct my hometown and put

these fragments that I collected from my hometown into a book which

can be read or showed. In this form, these spaces, people and objects can

condense on the paper. Through the covering and unfolding these pages,

it starts to reveal the meaning of my hometown to me. This handmade

book represents a guide book of my hometown.

Zhu’s work is created in two dierent moments: when she decides

which subject to portray and takes the picture, and then in the moment

to leaf through her book, which resembles a personal diary. It is the diary

where she gathers memories of her journey and also reproduces the pic-

tures that connect her to her past and her land. One of Zhu’s intentions

is to reect on Chinese urban development, showing the other face of

China’s reality: “It’s a section of all our hometowns which drifting away

in the urban developing. It will give us a chance to stop and touch our

hometown, reect on what is the meaning of home at the same time”.

Once again photography seems to oer the chance to “stop”, to freeze the

image of one’s land, in this constant race to the future.

Conclusion

Reading the authors’ words and observing their works, it is possible

to deduce a strong personal and subjective character of their researches.

They are a glance to their childhood places, a journey through time, be-

tween past and present, and through space, because the artists currently

live far away from these places. These series often work as a diary, and it is

in this modality that photography diverges from other artistic disciplines.

When we observe a photographic picture, we can witness, again, the event

taken by the camera, or feel that the portrayed person is in front of us. The

pictures of these photographic series work as “traces” of places, whether

they embody specic spaces, particular people, or common objects.

43 Zhu, A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015.

44 Zhu, A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-2015.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

140

After all, these photographic works seem to be the result of the need

to reconnect or give substance to a supposed identity, lost in the vortex

of modernity, which seems to inhabit in the authors’ original places. A

need as a consequence of the enormous, and extraordinary rapid, changes

that the Chinese society and the physical landscape of the country have

undergone over the last decades.

A great part of these works has a particular purpose: to document

something, a landscape often, or a net of human relations, that is irreme-

diably disappearing under the huge weight of progress. This is also why

many of them seem to take an objective distance from the reality they are

trying to capture.

As with any reportage, it’s time to come back to where you started, and

once there, to give new life to these photographs, or a new function: to

prevent the memories of those places, those objects, those people, to van-

ish completely. Even if the artist does not succeed in the task of keeping

or shaping an identity, at least it opens a window to the past and to places

otherwise irretrievably doomed to disappear.

Bibliography

Chun, Mimi. “Foreword”. In About My Hometown – Zhang Xiao, 1-3.

Hong Kong: Blindspot Gallery, 2015.

Griggs, Tom. “Interview: Su Jiehao”. Fototazo, January 6, 2015. http://

www.fototazo.com/2015/06/interview-jiehao-su.html.

Gu, Zheng. “From Coastline to Hometown: On Zhang Xiao’s Artistic

Creation and Its Shift”. In About My Hometown – Zhang Xiao,

5-11. Hong Kong: Blindspot Gallery, 2015.

Gu, Zheng. “A Theory of Chinese Personal Photograpy”. In 3030 New

Photography in China, edited by John Millichap, 14-17. Hong Kong:

3030press, 2006.

King, Russel. “Migration, Globalization and Place”. In A Place in the

World?: Places, Cultures and Globalization, edited by Doreen B.

Massey and Pat Jess, 5-33. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

141

Liao, Pixie. “China Week: You Li – Latitude of Silence”. Lens Cratch,

January 10, 2014. http://lenscratch.com/2014/01/youli-latitude-

silence/

Mu Ge. “Back Home (2005-2009)”. Private – International Review of

Photography, 50, autumn 2010, 6.

Roberts, Claire. Photography and China. London, Reaktion Books, 2013.

Su, Jiehao. Summer’s Almost Gone. Accessed March 22, 2017. http://

jiehaosu.com/summer-is-almost-gone/text/.

Tuan, Yi-fu. ‘Space and Place: Humanistic Perspective’, Philosophy in

Geography, vol.20, edited by Stephen Gale and Gunnar Olsson, 387-

427. Dordrecht, D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979.

Tuan, Yi-fu. Space and Place – The Perspective of Experience. Minneapolis,

University of Minnesota Press, 2014.

Visser, Robins. Cities Surround the Countryside: Urban Aesthetics in Post-

socialist China. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010.

Wu, Hung. Rong Rong’s East Village 1993-1998. New York, Chambers

Fine Art, 2003.

Yiu, Sheung. “A Journey In Reverse Direction, Zhu Lanqing”. Invisible

Photographer Asia, January 27, 2016, http://invisiblephotographer.

asia/2016/01/27/zhulanqing-interview/.

Zeng, Han. Leave and Return. Accessed March 22, 2017. http://www.

zeng-han.com/index.php?/projects/leave-and-return-2003-05/.

Zhang, Wenxin. “Five Nights, Aquarium: Statement”. Accessed August

6, 2021. http://www.zhangwenxin.com/fna.

Zhu, Lanqing. “A Journey in Reverse Direction: Dongshan Island 2013-

2015”. Accessed March 22, 2017, http://www.zhulanqing.com/

book/a-journey-in-reverse-direction/.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

142

Captures List

Figure 1.

Zhang Xiao, My Childhood Neighbour Grandma Zhu, from the series Shift, 2012,

Instant film on paper, 24 x 27 cm, courtesy of the artist.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

143

Figure 2.

Zeng Han, Leave and Return, 2003-2005, photograph, courtesy of the artist.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

144

Figure 3.

You Li, Latitude of Silence, 2007-2009, photograph, courtesy of the artist.

Roberto Figliulo | Return Home

145

Figure 4.

Mu Ge, Going Home, 2005-2009, photograph, courtesy of the artist.

Revista Internacional de Estudios Asiáticos,

Vol. 1(1): 122-146, Enero-Junio 2022

146

Figure 5.

Zhu Lanqing, A Journey in Reverse Direction, 2013-2015, photograph,

courtesy of the artist.