No other country in the world than China produces as many kilometers of propaganda banners. In the countryside, in cities, along highways up to the most unexpected places, they are ubiquitous. Past the Cultural Revolution, each era brings its abundance of educational slogans. Given the growing indifference of a society that loses its morality landmarks and civic sense, these slogans that float to the four winds in their silence only serve to give a false sense of comfort to the local government officers who wrote them and got them printed / installed.
Eric Leleu decided he would not let them pass in silence! He started to record them exactly according to the instructions of the New Topographics, studying with photography these “man-altered landscapes’. No matter whether you can read them or not because the meaning is not what is written on these red banners. It could be post-it notes stuck on a landscape, red Stickies. Or it could be stuck there to hide a scar, a wound, a cut, a rash, what we do not want to show. This systematic survey is emphasized by frontal compositions, with the banner placed at the center, as if the surveyor wanted to hammer it home, to put points on the i. A warning! A red stain! That’s it. The strength of this photographic survey is in its ability to “alter” a landscape.
Please move forward. Nothing to see. No Photo!
Jean Loh
Eric Leleu is a documentary photographer based in Shanghai, China.
