MP/VISUAL RESEARCH - LIU ZHENG

Since 1994, Chinese Liu Zheng has been working on his ambitious photographic project The Chinese. Inspired by the examples of August Sander and Diane Arbus, he has captured a people and country in a unique time of great flux. Liu seeks out moments in which archetypal Chinese characters are encountered in extreme and unexpected situations. His photographs are divided among a number of topics which betray a dark vision, albeit one that is laced with mordant humor. His main subjects to date have included street eccentrics, homeless children, transvestite performers, provincial drug traffickers, coal miners, Buddhist monks, prison inmates, Taoist priests, waxwork figures in historical museums, and the dead and dying.

I found his work quite bizarre two three years ago.   I don’t quite agree this is a good interpretation of the title “The Chinese”, well, my version of “The Chinese”.  On the other hand, photography especially documentary photography is always subjective.  The only thing I hate is a photographer try to photography things to grab viewers eye balls, and I don’t mind other photographers have different view point from me at all.  

Liu commented:   I have worked during an exceptional period (from roughly 1990 to the present) of radical and unprecedented change in the Chinese contemporary art scene. These years have also seen a new level of maturity in Chinese art circles. The shock waves of Deng’s policies of opening and reform and their effect on peoples’ ideology is fully reflected in contemporary artworks from the mainland. Photography, like other forms of art, went through a period of hard yet much-needed transition. During these years, the dominant role of news photography in China began to crumble, and the importance of traditional salon photography was also significantly weakened. Humanized and personalized works started to have an impact. It was in this context that, in 1996, I started the private journal New Photo with some of my friends. We all felt that a new era was coming. I was driven by a powerful intellectual force, which slowly evolved into a set of personal beliefs. For many years, it was this set of personal beliefs that helped me overcome numerous difficulties. The Chinese is the fruit of my own personal struggle.