“It’s been almost 30 years since I’ve been watching China, its economic, cultural and social evolution, and it’s been almost 30 years since the pulse of this country has been packed. Are transformed, alienated, rendered ugly, everything is sacrificed on the altar of development and profit.
Direct witness of this frenzy, I wanted to stop the time, to take back my Leica and my dandruff, as we would take an easel. I wanted to pose and play with the horizon lines, the characters, with background, modern China photographed as a mirage in mutation.
For the winter tale, I chose the Sungari River (northeast of China), an immense white page, a backdrop against which I tried to print the life of the great north of China. For that, I stood before dawn for the bluish light, for all those early risers who stretch, dance, swim, sing and howl as if everything seemed allowed before dawn.
For the summer tale, I returned to the beaches of northern China where, then student in Beijing, I escaped the days of heat wave. These kitsch and outdated beaches that are always looking for an identity, between seaside resort and simple coastal city, still vibrate with their iodized blur and sometimes sepia: Qingdao, Beidaihe, Nandaihe, Dalian. Curiously, after all this time, in this general context of revolutions, these mutations, these metamorphoses, these beach atmosphere have changed little.