Located at the west foot of Taihang Mountain, the city of Yangquan , in south of Shanxi Province of China, is celebrated as the biggest producing area for coal in China. In the 1950s, a large number of miners’ coming from other places were employed there . Many makeshift houses emerged in the deserted fields near the coal mines, which gradually formed a unique shanty district.
The Photographer Li Baoming became a specialist of dressing brick and roughcast walls of his photographs.
Born in Yangquan in Shanxi province China he has had many oportunities to photograph the coal mines exploited since the 50’s by coal miners who came from far away, and build makeshift houses.The shacks and their inhabitants have been the main focuse of his photography.
Li Baoming then had the idea of exposing his work not in a museum or a gallery but on walls. Gigantic prints on houses or walls as graffiti to give the not always pleasant environment something of an open air museum.Some pictures are 15 meter high.
The Chinese government gave him all their attention by patenting the process that allows the pictures to resist inclement weather.Since the distribution of his work the government has decided new and more confortable housing for the coal miners.
Li has realised the dream of his life when he exhibited his reportage on the walls during the festvals of Pingyao and Lianzhou in 2007 and hope to do it in Arles to show China has it was.
Walls give a special depth to these pictures, and it is the art of this photographer to give a new meaning to the art of graffiti.
Floris de Bonneville and Yang Qiong
