Retrotopia

From 2018 to 2021, Shi Yangkun spent four years filming three villages: Huaxi Village in Jiangsu, Nanjie Village in Henan, and Dazhai Village in Shanxi. The street view, buildings, and people’s attire there are not much different from other small towns in China. The scenes in the picture are all daily scenes and characters, and the village space is quiet, with calm character postures and expressions.

What a photo can only obtain is a slice of a certain time and space, which creates a tension between the meticulousness and fidelity of reality records and the overall unpredictability of reality in an instant. These three villages, which once shared the era of collectivism, have ultimately come to today’s personalized, fragmented, and mobile contemporary, with an unclear future. They are familiar scenes that have gone through industrialization and marketization, giving people a mixed feeling.

Just like the title of this book “Retrotopia”, Shi Yangkun’s record strives to capture a series of fleeting portraits of a historical dream that was once lost but has struggled to continue in the form of nostalgia to this day. The authenticity provided by this set of photos is completely equivalent to a forced direct examination of these marginalized memories and the current situation of those carrying them.

220x270mm

134 pages, 65 images

Hardcover