"The big prints assure me that I am not missing any details. Because of the trail left by time preserved in the photo, I feel I have captured a lot in this one moment." Zhu Hao

Zhu Hao’s colour photographs examine aspects of city landscapes that often go unnoticed. Through his use of colour and calculated positioning of the image he highlights the disorder in what is usually thought of as organised space (a modern city). As such he offers us a more organic and personal view of China’s super cities.

As a device, Zhu Hao shows these city landscapes devoid of people and in so doing foregrounds the subtle aspects of his scenes – those details that would otherwise go unnoticed. These apparently empty spaces also create a subtle tension, as we all understand that we are viewing what is undoubtedly some of the most densely populated spaces on the planet. The Chinese art critic, Gu Zheng, writing about the work of Zhu Hao, likens this detail to “silent chatter” in which, “the city’s cultural marks, like advertisements, paints and scratches, symbols and old buildings, reflect peoples desires and creativity.”

Images and text courtesey of Aura Gallery (Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai), FotoFest Beijing 2006 and Cullity Gallery, University of Western Australia.

Silent Chatter - the color photography of Zhu Hao by Gu Zheng

As a piece of land planned by man-made function, due to some unpredictable and uncontrollable factors, modern city is veering off the road set by its man-made functions, which however are continuously improving and perfecting at the same time. As time goes on, because of reproduction of its various practical functions and the disorderly superposition of its various sceneries, landscapes and views, the city ends up with presenting a symbolized space full of various contradictions, but seeing from people’s eyes, it has usually presented a landscape of surrealism. In such kind of space, objects and views are illogically entangled together, creating various small spaces, which just like various stages, for the objects to best show themselves.

Photographer Zhu Hao’s series of color photography works take the city landscapers at which we usually have no time to spare to take a look as the objects of shooting, and through subtle color representation and precise image description, they have presented a visual magic reflecting that the city space is a living body which is disorderly but organic. By his careful description, the reality, with its irresistible fascination show us all its colorfulness. When placing ourselves at the visual angle set by Zhu Hao and sharing with him the landscapes which have been produced as photos, we found that the reality itself including people had a very strong expressiveness of self-expression.

The landscapes in Zhu Hao’s photos are all shot from the city spaces which people are familiar with in daily life. However, after uniquely framed by Zhu Hao, all those views and objects which should not have been notice suddenly have appeared a kind of strange sense. Usually, these city spaces whether they are indoor or outdoor are taken as the backgrounds or setting of the people’s activities, and therefore placed in the back. But once the people are disappeared from these spaces, the spaces taken by the backgrounds or setting inevitably become the main objects of the reality, completely showing themselves and coming to the forestage.

All these backgrounds or settings including all the things around them have to be exposed in front of the camera, experiencing camera lens’ various shootings. And then, all the details and secrets of the backgrounds of settings, which are not often noticed, have to be completely exposed.

Only if the people are disappeared, can all these details and secrets have the chance to become the main objects for shooting; even for the people in Zhu Hao’s photos, because only part of the people’s body is taken in, they can also become the objects to be exposed. By transformation of the photography, the spaces become the landscapes, and the landscapes become the time settings. In the process of setting and transforming the space as an image of landscape, as a photographer, while Zhu Hao defines the reality, he also endows the time and the space with a new meaning. In his eyes, the landscape has gained the feeling of self-sufficiency and self-determination, but the space remains unchanged, and become a “history container” reducing and collecting time, desire, imagination and memory.

A red oxygen bottle, a bright garbage can, a line of clothes rack behind the curtain, a post of smoke ban, a lonely standing telephone booth, and you name it, all these objects and detailed things in the city, which are often neglected by people, will become threads of a story silently whispering after framed and shot by Zhu Hao, and the world seems to be full of stories.

By Zhu Hao’s framing and shooting, various things scattered and existed in the real world seems to have been endowed with relations to each other, and also demonstrate their existing forms, therefore all such things have gained a reason for their co-existing in a space, and a reason for their relating with each other after being shot.

As a matter of fact, photography is just the technical means which can bring different things together based on justifiable relations, and when photography is helping people find some new interesting things in the reality, it is also helping the different things establish their relationships with each other. Maybe it can be described just to the contrary, photography sets its nature in can use its unique way to make the world which appears to be reasonable seem to be ridiculous after framing and shooting.

In Zhu Hao’s works, the images of people seldom can be found, but all the city’s culture marks like advertisement, paints and scratches, symbol, heritages and buildings, which are recorded in the films, have conveyed people’s desire, imagination and creativity. He uses the scenarios of somebody’s absence to imply somebody’s presence. And these scenarios become the city’s landscape of the “object”, and through the “subject”-photographer Zhu Hao’s objective presentation, the “object’ has gained possibility of representing “subject”, but the photographer himself become the media of “object” representing “subject”.

As for the question of the “subject” representation of the “object”, French thinker and photographer Jean Baudrillard has given incisive explanations. He says: “We believe we can overpower the world with technology. But through technology, the world has imposed itself on us and the surprise effect generated by that reversal has been considerable. You think you photograph a particular scene for the pleasure it gives. In fact it’s the scene that wants to be photographed. You’re merely an extra in the production. The photographing subject is just the agent of the ironic appearance of things.

The miracle today is that appearances, which were long reduced to voluntary servitude but have now gained their in dependence, are turning around us, turning against us, through the very technology we use to drive them out. They now come from somewhere else, from their own place, from the heart of their banality; they are bursting in on us from everywhere, joyously multiplying on their own. The joy of taking photographs is an objective delight.”

As an acute and sensitive photographer, Zhu Hao is immersed in the so-called “intoxication evoked by the object being shot” (quotation from Baudrillard). With the help of photography, he has gone deeper and deeper into the heart of reality’s fascination. He would rather bravely face the reality and directly communicate with id than act as a spectator to snap up the landscape from the sideward. He touches the reality face to face, and when having a dialogue with the reality, he completely opens his mind to try to make himself become a media letting the reality step into camera lens, taking in all the things in front of his eyes.

By converting the subject and the object, he tries to make his photography become a media where the subject and the object are included with each other, replaced with each other and intruded with each other. And then with the photographer faded out and the reality faded in, the real world has finally and completely unfolded in front of us.

Photography is a behavior as well as a maneuver with the voice excluded. As opposed to the black-and-white photography abstracting the rich colors of the reality into difference in the black, white and gray, color photography is to transform the photographer’s wills and feelings into various colors, representing the richness of the reality. In the silence of flourishing colors, the reality with rich details sends countless hints, silently exposed to each other in forms and colors, covered with each other but vying with each other to demonstrate their respective importance and existence. Under the mediation of the photographer, all of these will end up with a harmonious entity unfolding in front of us.

We find, in Zhu Hao’s photography works, the clamor of the reality is transformed to countless colors at the moment the camera’s shutter is pressed. Though the voice is wiped off, the reality seems to still chatter, and even chatter more than before. The photographer devoting himself to being the supporting role for showing the fascination of the real world, displays the flourishing of the real world with the help of the silent chatter. Zhu Hao’s photography works use the rich colors, having produced the silent chatter of the real world and furthermore clearly pointing out: silence is chatter; silence id eloquence.

ZHU HAO

1969
Born in Shanghai, China

1991
Graduated from the Drama Literature Department of Shanghai Theater Academy

1989
First book of haiku collection < was published by Aha book publication California, USA and collected by Tokyo Haiku Museum
Now work as creative director in Ogilvy Activation of Ogilvy Group Shanghai

Solo Exhibitions

2005
Silent Shanghai, BWA gallery, Bielsko-Biala, Poland
Silent Shanghai, epSITE Shanghai
Places, 2005 Guangzhou Photo Biennial

2004
Zoo, Asian photography Biennial, Korea
Zoo, International Photography Festival, Fujian, Wuyishan

2003
“A La snaps” – Shanghainese on the beach, International Photography Festival, Pingyao

2002
“The Scene, 2001”, Shanghai Kodak Weima Gallery
“A La snaps” – Peep into Shanghainese lifestyle, Beijing POP Photography Gallery

Group Exhibitions

2007
“City Tale”，Ofoto，Shanghai
art beijing 2007 beijing
crazy aura gallery shanghai
Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition Wales Gallery Amsterdam Netherlands
ACAF New York 2007 NY City's Pier 92

2006
“Harvest II”, Art Scene , Shanghai
“STLESS" Explores Contemporary Photography and New Media Today, MOCA Shanghai
“Chinese Contemporary Photography” FotoFreo 2006 , Australia

2005
“Salute to Daido Moriyama”, epSITE Shanghai
“Harvest”, Art Scene , Shanghai
“Self-portraits of 19 Chinese Artists”, Lianzhou Photography Festival
“Selfhood & Absent Minded”, Guangzhou Time Property Gallery
“Absent Minded”, Lianzhou Photography Festival
“Chinese contemporary photography”, Art Santa Fe, USA
“Shifting Views: Chinese Urban Documentary Photography”, University of Michigan

2002
“Shanghai city 6 X9 ”, Shanghai Star Photographer Gallery, China
“City, Woman” , Shanghai Citic Salon