My work for the past 7 years has been wandering the streets to take pictures of peoples passing by. I see their bodies and the tired expression of their faces, wondered where else they were going to and when they were going back to their hometowns.. In the past 30 years the rapid developing of the city such had never happened in the history of China before required much more immigrants to work , so that many people move back and forth like migratory birds. Almost everyone is on the road without settling down, they left their hometown in order to make a living, but they couldn’t be embraced as real citizens by the city, they are scattered around the edge .
After I transfer the thousands of pictures I take everyday to the computer, I notice that these dense crowds are just like ants, and I am one among them. I then start to bring the sensation of the trajectory in my work creation, I start to separate people’s figure from the photos, to removed and match them up , which totally change the initial motivation of taking their pictures.
I believe all things are part of life, I cut off one segment of life and reshape it, and after numerous displacement and adding-up, the initial meaning of timing and places totally disappear. And, I make a new scene that differs from reality with these figures and things placed in my own logical order, and from which, I obtain a new perspective of seeing reality. This explains how I made my series in 2006.
My work is all about people. I deeply understand Chinese people’s surviving hierarchy. My work pyramid is a metaphor of this understanding.
Besides, everyone I encountered is a mirror of my own self, I see ourselves in the mirror. That’s why I name the recent completed work WE and its theme is us.
Zhang Bojun
