Photobook Sunday - Zhang Xinghai
Zhang Xinghai left his village in central China for the bright lights of Beijing dreaming of becoming a great writer. That was in 1999. After a few years washing dishes, delivering food and selling advertising he landed a journalism job at Beijing Science and Technology News - not quite the kind of writing he dreamed of. It was there he “fell in love with photography” and bought himself a cheap camera. Initially focusing on landscapes and architecture, his understanding of photography changed after seeing the work of Beijing Film Academy’s Zhu Jiong in 2006. Her photographs, documenting the lives of ordinary people in places like his home village in Shaanxi province, were transforming.
I realised then that good photography depicted people and their lives, rather than just scenery.
By this point Zhang was married with a young child and working full time at the newspaper so opportunities for photography were limited. Sometime in 2007 it occurred to Zhang that his long commute to and from work every day on the Beijing Subway was the perfect opportunity to depict “people and their lives”. So that’s what he did. For almost ten years.
As Zhang’s collection of images grew he thought about publishing a photobook but was warned that a book by an unknown photographer would never sell. So he posted them on social media and as the numbers went through the roof he was briefly famous, with China’s national press and international sites publishing his work and telling his story. (Unfortunately, as far as I know, no photobook ever appeared, nor have I been able to find where he originally posted the pictures, nor does he appear to have any current online presence.)
Around 2017 Zhang decided it was time to emerge into the light and leave the subway behind (though he did briefly return in 2020-2021 to photograph the subway during the COVID period.) Instead, he turned his lens on the Beijing neighbourhood of Sanlitun. Sanlitun is about as fashionable as it gets in Beijing - bars, restaurants, nightclubs, upscale malls, and the city’s fashionable young people decked out in designer labels and designer dogs.
This Sunday’s photobook is a collection of Zhang’s pictures from the neighbourhood taken in 2021 and 2022 as the city emerged from COVID restrictions and lockdowns. Enough of the words. Here are some pictures.
Zhang Xinghai, Catalogue of Contemporary Chinese Photography, Zhejiang Photography Publishing House, Hangzhou 2023, ISBN 978-7551443593
More of Zhang’s Beijing Subway pictures here.
An interview from 2020 (in Chinese) with more pictures above and below ground.
Another interview, this one from 2016 (also in Chinese).