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A Journey in Reverse Direction

Zhu Lanqing

Jiazazhi Press

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Hardcover
144 pages
170 x 230 x 20mm

These photos were taken on Dongshan Island, located in the Zhangzhou area of Fujian Province.

Modern urban's development tends to afflict those who leave with amnesia-they forget such a place ever existed. I can only follow behind them, using images to “resist” these unforeseen changes. My hometown has been influencing me and shaping me since the day I was born. Like the beginning of a story, I found an outfit passed down from my ancestors in my mother’s room. This is how my home interacts with me. Maybe the only thing I can see is what it wants me to see. Photographing my hometown was like traveling through a dingy memory, through an internal negativity.

In the works, I use the Bachimen Dam, Home, Food, Soil, Gods, and Sea to recreate the beacons of my hometown. I've combined these memories and fragments into a book. This process seemed able to distill the spaces, people, and objects onto the pages. By imposing and removing layers, this volume exposes the significance my hometown has to me - the work is a representation of my hometown in illustrations. It is a cross section of the gradual process of urbanization, allowing us to connect with a city that is frozen in place and reflect on what home means to us.

Zhu Lanqing, 1991, born in Dongshan Island, Fujian Province, China. She graduated from the Department of Photojournalism at the RENMIN University of China and then moved to Taiwan to study at the Institute of Applied Arts in Fujen Catholic University. Her works are most related to the hometown and place, have been published in many magazines and shown at different international art festivals like ECHIGO-TSUMARI ART FIELD, Rencontres-Arles International Photo Festival, FORMAT International Photography Festival and so on. She is interested in the possibilities of the presentation of photography especially handmade book. Her first book was selected in the list of Photo-eye’s Best Books of 2012. Her second book A Journey in Reverse Direction won the Three Shadows Photography Award 2014 and Jimei×Arles Discovery Award 2015. She also won the Barcelona International Photography Award 2015 and Photo Boite 30 UNDER 30 2016. She just finished an artist residency program in Switzerland for three months supported by FDDM.