Galerie Julian Sander presents a selection of prints from the extensive series 101 Portraits of Hutong by Chinese photographer Xu Yong.
In his series, created in 1989/90, he focuses on the history of Beijing’s traditional residential areas with their centuries-old houses, backyards and narrow alleyways, the so-called hutongs.
Xu Yong’s black and white photographs document the ups and downs, the heyday and decline of the hutongs in the face of the rapid changes in Chinese society since the end of the Qing dynasty.
With his elegiac series, Xu Yong has created a monument to Beijing’s old alleyway districts, expressing both their poetic beauty and the sadness of their disappearance. In his melancholy photographs, he captures fragments of a vanishing reality and the fleeting charm of the old alleyways.
Xu Yong : 101 Portraits of Hutong
Until March 8, 2025
Galerie Julian Sander
Bonner Str. 82
50677 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49 (0) 221 170 50 70
www.galeriejuliansander.de
