No Photos!
What are you doing?
You have no rights!
You scared me!
Do you know how to respect others!?
You are crazy!
NO!!!
Fuck you!!!
Above words are what I heard when I was walking on streets in Beijing photographing strangers for this series. For this work, my mind feels some confusion and hard to explain why I would do that. I am also not sure what I have done is right or not because the moment what I got is for people saying “NO” clearly and trying to stop me. Seems my behavior was very rude because without strangers’ prior permission, I chose a sudden, aggressive way to jump in front of strangers taking photos for them. Normally, I am a gentle person, used to ask people’s permission before taking photos. In my experience, at few years before, it was quite easy to get strangers’ photo permission if I asked. However, a feeling but cannot explain why I felt in recent years, the attitude of being photographed have been changing in China’s society. I asked more, I got more ruthless denial.
