Arles 2016 : DI LU, Businessmen in Bazaar

Di Lu‘s photographic projects “business man in bazaar” started in 2012. To be more specific, he photographs in the local bazaar Hetman Xinjiang  in the Uyghur Autonomous Region where people come to exchange goods periodically. He asks people to hold what they sell or buy for a photo shot in a temporary photo studio set in the  bazaar. After finishing the shoot, he gives a Polaroid image to each of them as a gift. The artist’s rudimentary idea is to record the object exchange based business in a primitive bazaar and then save it as a document. For historical perspective, photographs are evidence of a historical model of market, since this model gradually disappears  with the development of economics. From an artist’s perspective,although he picks up strangers in the bazaar, this project is personalized and subjective,since the situation evokes memories from his youth . Thereby, the action of photographing generates two meanings at the same time in the project: documenting a disappearing business model  and recording the emotions and lives of the artist and his subjects.

Di’s strategy is taking posed pictures. Rather than shooting crowds in the bazaar , he chooses to isolate different individuals and then takes photos of them holding their  belongings. This dependent relationship between people and products, such as an elder man with a rooster, a child with a sheep, and a female farmer with a cabbage, all become a symbol. This symbol signifies a necessary way of survival for the people coming to the bazaar. Therefore, using photographs to document the symbol is to save a certain lifestyle . More significantly, due to the designed poses of the images,  based on traditional pictorial compositions, convey some characters of painting skills. On this level, we can say, this body of work is both photos and paintings, and, in the mean time, this is the first level of this body of work.

Roland Barthes provides two aspects that help understand the images: studium and punctum. Studium indicates the universal meaning, by which it means people in general can understand what the image represents. For instance, the man is holding

a rooster in his arms and the rooster is the merchandise for exchange in the photo. Punctum, however, indicates a different meaning when this photo is out of its original context. In terms of aura, studium composes of the third level of Di’s project.There are two meanings with regard to punctum in his project. One of them is that it contains the trace that interests and impresses audience. The trace could be a stimulus, sometimes obvious, sometimes not, provoking a certain emotion like  nostalgia in every photo. The “Business men in bazaar” series is the project that reveals this emotion, in which audience may share  similar feeling with the artist as long as the audience may be touched by one or two images at a certain moment。

On the other hand, another meaning of punctum indicates a change from the original context. Di’s body of work was taken in PI SHAN, southern part of xinjiang. The majority here are Uighurs, but another  11 minorities share this area.  All participants in this project are Uighurs. According to the artist’s description, they are friendly and curious, but not very Mandarin. They offered free fruits to the artist when the artist did the project in the bazaar, and actively joined the project without pay.However, PI SHAN is known in the press for its notorious terrorism, and some medium even say PI SHAN is the home of terrorists. With this discourse/context, when the audience go back to see the portraits, the meaning behind  the photos has changed, which pushes us to think of a problem from different perspectives. Therefore, this is another meaning that implies punctum.

Written by Dr. YAN ZHAO,  the editor for “ART RESEARCH” Magazine,China Central Academy of Fine Art

EXHIBITION
Businessmen in Bazaar
DI LU
Presented by Galerie Le Magasin de jouets
From July 6th to September 15th, 2016
Hôtel du Mas de la Chapelle