Artist Statement
If China is a preview of the world evolving over the rest of the twenty-first century (many say that it is so), Shanghai is the dress rehearsal. It is far enough from Beijing, and different enough from Hong Kong, to resonate with a distinct exuberance.
Rising from the floodplain of the Huangpu at the confluence with the Yangtze delta, nineteenth century Shanghai was the epicenter of the colonial maritime empire in the Pacific Rim. Thriving on lucrative markets in opium, currency, cheap labor and prostitution, the district pulled at the poor rural population like all cities do. By the early twentieth century, among its most important goods for export was political revolution. Modern China owes its present politic to the armature built in Shanghai in the 1920s by Chiang Kai-Shek, Mao Zedong, their mentors and followers. In this century Shanghai is shorthand for breakneck urban expansion and (by China’s standards) impossible-to-imagine wealth.
These photographs, made during two weeks in 2002, are a first look, a first impression. They try to record, with the unrestrained awe of an outsider, the textural drama of the implosion - and the rending – of a culture as it defies nature by morphing from a regional hub into a world-class metropolis in one quick turn of the page.
While the techniques of photo-mosaic and stitched panorama are far from uncommon, they were chosen here as a response to the frenetic din of an urban landscape whose pieces never quite perfectly fit. The city, like the pictures, evolves in ephemeral layers that seem essential while expendable – and everywhere taunting the limits.
The photographs range in size from 24”x30” to 12”x60” (Jin Mao Tower). Each is a high- resolution pigment inkjet print on acid free paper.
