Without the lofty visions of the World Bank and the analytical
finesse of models and theory, Documenting China: Contemporary
Photography and Social Change presents in visual terms
a poignant story of transformation. The photographs expose both
a narrative of exacerbated misery and unpredictable comedies;
moreover, they reveal the understated dignity of a people confronting
one of the most massive and unforgiving transformations in its
long history: urbanization.
As testament to this colossal historical process, these photographs,
on one level, complement Stiglitz’s grand pronouncement.
In the coming decades nine hundred million rural Chinese will
become urbanized. Even today the world is experiencing the economic
impact of this movement, one that spreads urban values like
an epidemic in the Chinese hinterland and draws millions of
peasant youths toward the city’s endless energy, violent
expansions, and excessive exploitation.
Yet images are uncannily distant from such global concerns,
for they reveal the individuals behind statistics, the citizens
of the developing world left behind by development, surrounded
by the dull and oppressive urban architecture of third-world
China that looks eerily akin to its postmodern counterparts
in the industrialized West.
Urbanization, at once an enticing and “dirty”
idea in contemporary China, is visualized through peasant figures
whose ancestors have for millennia been dedicated to their land.
These peasants now live in the squalid quarters of the urban
slum with dreams of fulfillment. Urbanization is also apparent
in the grease stains on the poster of clean-shaven Andy Lau,
the megastar of Cantopop music, an urban cultural movement rejected
resolutely by the tidy and old-fashioned Shanghailanders, arguably
the most urbane of urban Chinese. Those who have read John Dos
Passos’s monumental trilogy, U.S.A., will relate, though
at a metaphorical and historical distance, to the powerful,
heart-shaking experience of aimlessness.2
Like Dos Passos’s American heroes, the Chinese in these
photographs are adrift in vast historical tides, moving toward
destinies beyond their control, while they experience the near
futility of trying to maintain a clear, moral perspective on
a constantly changing world. For audiences, this exhibition
does not proffer a transparent window on China; rather, it transcends
the visual record to suggest a moment of almost tactile connection
between viewer and subject. It offers a lens of intimacy with
contemporary China, its people, their changing perspectives,
their sense of loss, their lofty dreams interrupted by nightmare,
and their mundane lives filled with minute surprises.
A veteran student of the camera trained in China and Japan,
Gu Zheng is associate professor of journalism at China’s
renowned Fudan University in Shanghai and vice president of
the Asian Society of Photographers. Winner of numerous national
photography awards in China, including the most prestigious,
the Ministry of Culture Gold Medal, he is the author of four
books and curator of important photography exhibitions in Asia,
including the First Asian Photo Biennale in Seoul (2002) and
the Yipin International Photography Festival in Shanghai (2001).
The collaboration between Gu Zheng and the Bates College Program
in Asian Studies began in early 2002 and Gu began selecting
work for the exhibition in the fall of 2002. For the winter
semester of 2004, he was resident scholar of Asian studies at
Bates College, where he performed curatorial work for this exhibition,
was involved with classes, and undertook several projects with
students. In recognition of Bates College’s commitment
to the study of Asian cultures and societies and with permission
of the artists, Gu Zheng arranged for the entire collection
of exhibited works to be donated to the Bates College Museum
of Art’s permanent collection.
John Yu Zou
Assistant Professor of Chinese
Bates College
Lewiston, Maine
