Photography
Unrequited Love
Wild Dancers
Summer Maze
Unequal Invaders
Design
Basements
Unrequited Love
Huangzi
Summer Maze A Traveler
1https://vimeo.com/382959980 2https://vimeo.com/382960576 3https://vimeo.com/382960856 4https://vimeo.com/382961057
Summer Maze A Traveler #2-5, 2019
Video, 1′03″
Sanlitun, Beijing, is a fashionable business district where beauties and hot online stars gather here, there are also street photographers here. The group of street photographers stationed in Sanlitun is very famous. Most of them are not from fashion media, but from the middle-aged and elderly photographers who come here spontaneously – also known as the “wild Old wizard”, which forms an interesting ecological chain with the hot online stars and passers-by here.
Sanlitun Ecosphere
Old wizard
The Old wizard refers to those who are obsessed with photography equipment and ignore creation and expression, but comment on other people’s works as a senior artist. Most of them are middle- aged and old-age photography enthusiasts, mostly with derogatory meanings.
“Wild Old wizard” refer to the those who come and go in Sanlitun
and other commercial centers without fixed organizations and
form groups spontaneously.They are located under the streetlights
in Sanlitun, dressed in overalls and vest, each with a long focal
lens, looking left and right, looking for beautiful girls as their main
shooting targets.
Online celebrity
Simultaneously, there are a lot of “wild online celebrity girls” in Sanlitun.These girls want to be popular overnight through the Internet and self-media culture, so they look for any way to increase their exposure to perform and spread-including through the lens of the Old wizard. For a while, Sanlitun became a public performance space, wild celebrity girl became a model, and the Old wizard was their exclusive photographer.
Passerby
The main purpose of passers-by in
Sanlitun is shopping, most of which
young people. According to my
on-site observation, most of them
would try to avoid meeting the Old
wizard.
1. Search on the web:
Street photography was originally used to convey information of the public. After searching for “Sanlitun Street Photography” on the Internet, I found that Sanlitun has become a large-scale show gathering, and the public place has become a “free show”.The beauties and online stars prepares meticulously in succession then comes here to perform.The number of the street photo on the short video platform has indeed formed a complete industrial chain that integrates photography, models, clothing brands and so on.
When searching for the social accounts of the Old wizard on the Internet, its not hard for us to find that in most of the photos of the Old wizard, the models were cooperative, which makes the Old wizard’s shooting seem appropriate. However, the fact is that in addition to the wild online stars who reached an agreement with the wild Old wizard, most of the people being photographed and people who witnessed this phenomenon expressed their antipathy against the Old wizard on the internet. There is a saying in a post : most of the Old wizard are under the guise of photography. When they see a beautiful girl, they rush up, take photos of their buttocks, chest and legs , so as to meet their physiological desire. When it was released to the Internet, it attracted all kinds of male netizens to praise it, and simultaneously, it made the shooting behavior legitimate.There are also a few people believing that this is a kind of spontaneous act. If there is a commodity, someone will sell it. Hot online celebrities’ desire to perform is like the Old wizard’s desire to shoot.
“Online red street shooting” on the Internet.
Wang Hongyue, the old master.
2. Perspective of peeping: the daily life of the old wizard:
In the long-term on-site observation, I not only tried to communicate with the Old wizard group directly, but also tried to shoot their activities in a relatively secret place as the initial creative attempt. In one shooting, I not only recorded the chasing of some Old wizard for women who refused to take photos, but also recorded my disgust and anger to their act of shooting. This makes me see the other side – the camera has become a kind of tool of power and violence, people have the desire to record others, but also resist being recorded with unknown intention. This produces a natural inequality and satirical effect.
In my further creation, I first realized that what fascinated me most is the delicate relationship among the photographer, the people being photographed and the public in Sanlitun, which breaks through the conventional concept of public space. I don’t want to subjectively bring the position of the Old wizard, wild hot online stars or the public into my creation. On the contrary, I want to highlight the drama of this complete ecological scene, so I created a behavior series.
After deciding taking Sanlitun as the place to carry out my performance, I performed and walked in Sanlitun with different identities and images in a united slow walking way in a few days. I strengthened the drama of Sanlitun scene through different Old wizard intervening in the space. My identity and perspective constantly changed, becoming “an alien in the scene”, a real person who intervenes the whole scene, and breaks the present order of the scene, namely, the existing identity relationship, brings the audience to the scene and experiences the relationship between space and people of different positions in the place. The whole process is recorded by cameras placed in the coffee shop in advance.
Summer Maze A Traveler #1, 2019 Video 1′03″
After many performances, I got a lot of feedback from the audience, and appeared in the online media Xiaohongshu.
Happened to appear on the live broadcast of a host and was introduced by her
Passersby ask me to take a
picture
‘Old Wizard’ taught
me how to be more sexy
and successful
I found my traces on a short video account of Old Wizard
Different comments
on other videos
Then I designed an image that has affinity for mages, passers-by and netred. When the old mage was shooting netred, I broke into the picture. At the same time, passers- by took photos with me actively or passively. I broke the original ecological space in their lens.
I hope that in the next creation, I can invite the public to participate in the project instead of only creating my own behavior works.The current plan is as follows:
1.Invite a large number of hot online to Sanlitun in uniform for flash
2. Invite many Old wizard to take photos.
3. Design a “Old wizard Street” in public places to meet the space needs of the Old wizard and wild hot online stars.
Image from Old Wizard
https://vimeo.com/383246813
