From “Going Home” to “Dust” to “Behind the Wall”
“Home” has been the core of my work
I am a photographer
I lived in Chongqing for the first 22 years of my life
And the later 20 years I lived in Chengdu
Mugetang Gallery was found in 2015
And we moved to the Blue Roof a year ago
My hometown is in the Three Gorges Dam area
A small town named Jianshan in Wuxi County
I watched TV for the first time when I was 6 years old
The world appeared to be a brilliant place
I wanted to see the world so badly
That I picked the furthest school I could go, it’s in Chengdu
I started traveling back and forth between my hometown and Chengdu since 1999
It’s 6 hours’ train ride from my home to Yunyang County
Two days and nights to Chongqing by liner
Then one day and one night from Chongqing to Chengdu
The changes of the Three Gorges Dam
On my way home
I discovered that many traces of my childhood
Faded away because of the changes
And thus I started the “Going Home” series
I started photographing in 2004
And now it’s been 16 years
The sense of ritual when I took the Yangtze River ship as a boy
Just like when I first left my hometown
Residents by the river would hang out on the bank
Young boys and girls
They’d date on the bank
Between 2009 and 2013
I was invited to a couple of exhibitions abroad
And I was struck by the fact
That foreigners only knew China as the country of panda, the Great Wall, Beijing Opera
So I decided to do a work about China
With the Great Wall as a main clue
“Behind the Wall” was created between 2013 and 2018
Starting from Xinjiang all the way through to Dandong
6 years, over 12,800 kilometers
About 3,000 negatives
Sizes are 4×5 and 8×10
I took two photos top a day
And I had a driving recorder
With which I recorded my trip
The Great Wall extends to villages in the north
These are places that unless you’ve really been there
You would never understand their existence in the world
A town park in Hebei Province
A man is reading a newspaper
He said he's a farmer
Who spent five years trying to pass the college entrance exam but failed
So he became a joke in her village
Why is a farmer wearing glasses
Sometimes it's not that they don't work hard enough
They never got an equal chance
I take one day off after five days of shooting
See historical spots, wander in antique markets
Antique markets in those places don't sell famous art pieces
Many of their products are from inheritance
Old stuff has traces of time on it
I can use it as a pot base or arrange flowers in it
They can be a part of my life
I collected almost 6,000 pieces of them
Pottery, wood, stone
The most expensive one costs less than 100 thousand
And the cheapest one is only 5 yuan
I probably would create something
Based on my collection
Now that I have kid
I could spend more time at home and focus on my creation
Recording my feelings about home