Interview: Jiehao Su

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

Jiehao Su (b. 1988) is a Chinese photographer. His work has been exhibited in various group/selected/solo exhibitions in Europe, North America and Asia, including at Derby QUAD Gallery, Belfast Cultúrlann, Musée du quai Branly, Benaki Museum, UNM Art Museum, United Photo Industries HQ Gallery and Actual Size Los Angeles. His work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, British Journal of Photography, Paper Journal, GUP and China Life Magazine.

Su is a finalist for the APA/Lucie Foundation Scholarship in 2014. He is included in the Ones to Watch of British Journal of Photography, as well as the Magnum 30 Under 30. Recently he has received an Arte Creative Award from Düsseldorf Photo Weekend, an IdeasTap Award from Format Festival and a Grand Prize from Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards. Su currently lives and works in Beijing.

He has also been interviewed on urbanautica and featured on Lenscratch.

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From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

fototazo: For those that aren't familiar with "Borderland," tell us about the project.

Jiehao Su: "Borderland" is a project deeply rooted in my personal history. I spent my early twenties living a nomadic life in China, trying to escape from the sorrow of my mother's sudden death when I was 18. After years of wandering, I began work on "Borderland" in 2012 as a way to look inward and recall my early memories, to reflect on my identity and to search for a sense of belonging. 

As I returned to some places in my mind, revisiting moments from the past, I construct a personal narrative with a mix of atmospheric portraits and landscape, as well as intimate still life details. Together the images comprise a delicate, phlegmatic and melancholic meditation on my personal history. My aim is to rebuild my self-awareness through an autobiographical portrait of my homeland, as well as to seek comfort through reconnection to the past. In this sense, "Borderland" is an intimate work of remembrance, tenderness and self-consolation.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: How do you try to balance the references to your personal narrative in your work with this almost documentary gaze of the rapidly urbanizing peripheries of Chinese cities and the people who live there? What are the ways as a photographer that you can try to make sure that the project is not dominated by the personal so that it's too opaque for others to enter or, on the other hand, not so strongly rooted in document that it swallows the personal side of the project?

JS: Yes. I felt that this was the most challenging part when I was working on this project. What I try to do is to find a delicate balance between personal and societal. It's like writing a poem. I try to find something beyond the reality, something personal, emotional and intimate, yet presented at a calm distance. The personal emotions in my work are usually revealed in a calm manner.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: You talk about the photographs as a way "to reconnect with memory in a different way." This is an intriguing idea to me, and an inversion of the usual relationship that we imagine between photograph and memory – photography is being used here to access the past and memories of the past instead of to document the present to serve as memories in the future. Tell us more about your ideas of reconnecting with memory and the past through your work.

JS: Honestly, I think it's a very personal situation. As I mentioned earlier, I've tried very hard to escape from the trauma of losing my mother in my late teenage years. Afterwards I lived a nomadic life for several years and wished to forget all the memories of my past. Eventually I was able to forget some of my past memories. Later, after a long time of wandering in my homeland, I began to yearn for a sense of belonging and wanted to retrieve my early memories and rebuild my self-awareness. Part of the reason I started this project is to recall my early memory, as well as to search for a sense of belonging. The whole process is like self-healing.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: Of the portraits, you say in the interview you did with Steve Bisson on urbanautica, "When I am portraying people, I feel like I am taking self-portraits." Do you feel you can make a self-portrait with any model or does it need to be a very specific sense of being drawn to them as a subject or a particular sense of connection to them? Does this feeling cause you to make portraits differently than someone without this feeling?

JS: It needs to be a very specific sense of being drawn to them as a subject or a particular sense of connection to them. I choose models very carefully, taking into consideration their states of being, especially their emotion and state of mind, as well as the relationship between them and the places they are in. My models are usually strangers. The way I approach them is smooth, delicate and calm. I try to create empathy between the model and me, which may be perceived by the viewer. Sometimes it is like a process of meditation.

f: You talk about your work blending fiction and nonfiction as well as in being between reality and imagination. Can you expand upon what you mean for us?

JS: I feel there is a deep duality in this body of work, not only between reality and fiction, but also between present experience and memory, isolation and belonging. Instead of documenting reality, I prefer to use documentary photography to construct my personal experience.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: Take us out shooting with you. If we were to be sitting nearby watching you as you took a photograph, what would we see?

JS: Usually I choose a place on the map and then go there. I would spend a couple of hours driving or walking around there, searching for something in my mind. It is very important for me to keep a high concentration level while working. Then I set up my tripod and camera if I see something capturing my interest. I always pay a lot of attention to details, such as composition and perspective. I just want to make sure that everything is exactly what I want.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: What is your perspective on the boom in landscape work being created in China, both by other Chinese photographers and by foreigners? What is some of the best work you’ve seen created there? Are there consistencies that can be identified in the work? 

JS: China is a huge country with a sophisticated and conflicted reality. It is also a country with plentiful resources, which is ideal for photographers. In my limited knowledge, to name a few of my personal favorites, I think the British photographer Nadav Kander produced great work of the Yangtze River, the mother river of China. I also would like to mention some Chinese photographers, including You Li, Muge, Taca Sui and many more.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

f: Are there other photographers working with the landscape in China who have impacted your own work or vision for creating photographs of China?

JS: Regarding photography, I would say my influence mainly comes from Western photographers. For instance Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore, Robert Adams, Rineke Dijkstra, Elina Brotherus, as well as the Dusseldorf school of photography, like Thomas Struth and his friends. 

f: What is the most important thing you've learned about photography in the last year?

JS: I realize that it is important for me to find a balance between doing photography and life itself.

f: Anything else that you’d like to add, Jiehao?

JS: I plan to finish the "Borderland" series this year and am looking for opportunities in publication, exhibition and gallery representation.

From the series Borderland © Jiehao Su

95: James Wasserman

James Wasserman
New City 1
2011
Location: Guangzhou, China

Series Statement: This photo of Guangzhou's Canton Tower taken from the Zhujiang Xincheng District captured much of the synergy that I see in China's urban development. Directed from the top levels of government whole swaths of cities are being redeveloped in a way that reflects a dream of modernity. In some ways these areas are more like elaborate facades waiting for its actors. They stand in stark contrast to the other parts of the city that have developed over centuries. The old neighborhoods are intricate, complex and organic. Both are incredibly interesting to photograph.

I'll continue to work on this project during 2012 and put periodic updates on my blog, Chinopolis.net.

Interview: Greg Girard

Walled City Exterior, 1987, from  "Kowloon Walled City"

Greg Girard is a Canadian photographer (b. 1955) who has spent much of his career in Asia, first visiting Hong Kong in 1974, and later living in Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. He became a professional photographer in 1987, based first in Hong Kong and later in Shanghai. His work to date has examined the social and physical transformations taking place throughout the region.

In 1993 he co-authored (with Ian Lambot) City of Darkness: Life in Kowloon Walled City, a record in photographs and text of the final years of Hong Kong's infamous Walled City, demolished in 1992. This unique city-within-a-city was comprised of 300 separate interconnected high-rise buildings, erected piecemeal, and housed more than 33,000 people. In 2007, Phantom Shanghai - a monograph of his photographs of Shanghai - was published by Magenta Publishing for the Arts.

In the Near Distance, a book of photographs made between 1973 and 1985 during his early travels, was published in 2010 by Kominek Publications, Berlin. Hanoi Calling, published in 2010 by Magenta Publishing for the Arts, is his fourth book and looks at the Vietnamese capital on the eve of its millennium anniversary.

His work is represented by Monte Clark Gallery (Vancouver/Toronto). He works on assignment for publications such as National Geographic Magazine and continues to pursue long-term book length projects.

Buildings on Bat Su Street, 2010, from "Hanoi Calling"

fototazo: What drew you initially to the East and what keeps you going back there – both as a person and photographer?

Greg Girard: I don’t know if there is any single thing. There was a photograph of Hong Kong harbor in a Time-Life series of photography books in the early 1970s; it showed neon signs atop buildings, at dusk on a day darkened by rain. In the foreground was a local fisherman standing and rowing a small skiff. The clash of the two worlds (neon, modern buildings/fishing, sampans) was dramatic and yet somehow matter of fact, and I thought I’d like to be in that place, and try to take photographs that had whatever that photograph had in it. After graduating from high school I worked and saved money and then travelled to Hong Kong by Philippine freighter in 1974. I was 18 years old. Friends were heading to Europe, which didn’t interest me. I was reading the novels of writers who had set stories in that part of the world (Graham Green’s The Quiet American). Events in the news at the time also played some part, the Vietnam War in its final years was in the background. A couple of years later I visited Tokyo and decided to stay, living there for nearly three years, and then in 1982 moved to Hong Kong.

House on Yuyuan Lu, 2001, from "Phantom Shanghai"

f: Much of your work examines the themes of the social and physical transformations taking place throughout Asia. Talk with us about what you have learned during your career about the connection between the physical and social transformations of a society. How much does creation and demolition of space change a people? And how much does the nature of a people shape their decisions on how to form their physical surroundings?

GG: Early fascination with that part of the world also came in part from the question of what constitutes "normal" in a place like Hong Kong, where verticality and density are so common that it hardly registers on its residents. Within Hong Kong itself the most extreme example was probably the Kowloon Walled City, one large city block with over three hundred interconnected high-rise buildings, built without the contribution of a single architect, home to 33,000 people. I say it hardly registers but of course it does, in ways that aren’t always apparent.

In Shanghai in the mid- to late-1990s much of the city looked like it had been bombed from the air, so widespread was the demolition of central neighborhoods. It was a unique moment because at the same time the pace of new construction was just staggering. Following a directive from Beijing the city was racing to make up for lost time. Between 1949 and 1990 there had been hardly any new construction in the city, certainly not the kind of urban development for profit that creates skylines.

One of the things I wanted to look at was not simply the contrast between what was disappearing and what was arriving but rather something perhaps not immediately apparent, and that was the way the city's period architecture had been used in ways never intended. Single-family houses and apartments had been reconfigured to accommodate many more people than they were originally built for. This was a feature of life for Shanghai's residents in the New China after 1949, and especially after the Cultural Revolution. Hallways were turned into communal kitchens, car garages into homes, storage spaces into bedrooms. How that worked and what it looked like, knowing it would eventually disappear, was something I wanted to pay attention to.

Cubicle Kitchen, 2005, from "Phantom Shanghai"

f: How would you describe the changes in terms of urban development and preservation policy in Asia between your first trips there in the 1970’s and today?

GG: In Shanghai, for example, preservation was something that happened by default, when China rejected capitalism and banned private property. That was later reversed, unleashing a frenzy of demolition and construction unlike anywhere on the planet. By the time people start thinking about preservation it's usually a belated effort to slow a process that has already gone too far. It's also a sign that a society or a place has matured. Young people in Hong Kong today have an appreciation for their city and its history - as evidenced in the built environment - that the previous generation didn't.

Children on Rooftop, 1990, from  "Kowloon Walled City"