First edition (2016)

First impression

Medium format hardback in new condition

About 

"These photographs were taken in Beijing during a month-long residency. Prior to visiting China I had no real sense of this vast country. China had never formed part of my long-term plans or interests. When I was invited to participate in the residency, I decided to go almost as a challenge to my lack of intrigue. I treated it as an experiment. I loved Beijing: its people, its cuisine, its scale. It is huge and frenetic in a way I have never encountered before. Its massive crowds have a way of amplifying one’s sense of being an outsider – making it the most existential place I have ever experienced, especially since no one speaks English.

I started the project by discreetly spreading the news that I wanted to make family portraits. Through this process I met someone who became my access point into Beijing’s younger, brasher side. My photographs focused on the contrasts or juxtapositions that animate present-day China. They include portraits of an older generation of people who grew up under the revolution and made incredible sacrifices for the country, alongside portraits of a younger generation – most of them art students – who have grown up in a post-revolutionary consumer society which is highly constrained and mediated by the state. Consumerism has become a religion for the youth, as well as a way of directing their alienation. In a way, Beijing now is similar to what I imagine the US must have been like before AIDS in the early 1970s. I was struck by the remarkable decadence compared to what I am used to." -Pieter Hugo