Images: Hu Yang's "Shanghai Life"

Hu Yang presents a sequence of photos and short biopic statements from ninety-seven different households and their tenants within Greater Shanghai. The full collection totals around five hundred, and is currently on display at the Shanghai Art Gallery. The museum's site, while somewhat stilted in its translation, offers an interview with the artist that yields such ambiguous gems:

``Until the moment I checked all the answers did I find that life in fact is fair to everyone,'' [Yang] says, ``Because most of the rich people exchanged their happiness and time to earnings."

Still, the social scope of the project makes his humanism pretty unequivocal; eye these examples -


Wei Yufang (Shandongnese, Vendor)
We are leading a hard life and eat battercakes, pickles and a glass of water for all three meals. When our kids want meat dishes, we cook them an egg. We work more than 15 hours a day if it doesn't rain. We want our kids to be educated and not to live like us. I will risk anything if our kids can go to university. My eldest son is excellent and wins prizes every semester. I suffer being teased by local ruffians.

Gao Ming (Jilinese, Unemployed)
Every day I'm thinking about some philosophical questions? I want time to go backwards and I want to know whether this society is square or round. Painting and cultivating flowers are my two hobbies. I express my thoughts, my beliefs and my feelings through painting while by cultivating flowers, I can communicate with nature. In a narrow sense, I'm satisfied with my present life because I'm living in the way I want; in a broad sense, I have nothing to complain. My wife works and supports this family and I'm just doing unpractical things all day long. My pains are my imperfection in spiritual life, my lazy character and my weak viability.

Zhao Ke (Hunanese, Musician)
I'm leading an irregular life and believe disorder inspires my creation. I like composing poems or lying in bed staring blankly. Staring blankly helps me to fancy and relax.


Something about the responses really quantifies what the artist's (speaking more generally) imperative is; a great and cataclysmic juxtaposition of people's varying values, while hinting at the similarities that keep them together. No matter whether the question is "square or round?" or "downtown or underground?" or even an assertion ("I will stare into the face of Chaos!"); we all need caves and questions and rationales to explain ourselves should a photojournalist chance by. I'll be waiting by the place where the light leaks in.