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ORIENTALISM AND REVERSE Lambda Prints mounted on alluminium, laminated and framed I 46.68 x 70 cm and 46,68 x 63,51 cm | Edition of 3+1 AP | 2010 © Tatiana Macedo 2010 |
Photographs Shanghai, 2008 When I travelled to Shanghai I noticed the amount of Chinese tourists from all corners of China visiting the city and gazing both at the few remaining landmarks of ancient China and the modern architectural landscapes of Pudong. After approximately one month in Shanghai I found Dogmen Rd car park, an urban wasteland where hundreds of long distance buses full of tourists from all over China parked daily. Houses had to be demolished and people relocated to give space to what is now the car park. It is situated beside the “old town” and the views of some of the tallest buildings in Asia. While the tourists go sightseeing I am drawn to the empty buses, looking through their windows, to what is now a non-space, an empty bus with traces of human presence and the memory of a journey. The place – Shanghai - is only revealed through subtle reflections in the glass window. The curtain framing conveys a theatrical quality to the images while the fabrics reveal a mix of both Western and Oriental culture, very explicitly in the one that says “I love you”, both in Mandarin and English, or the one with the Playboy symbol. These images become static viewscapes not from a passenger’s point of view, but looking in, both the landscape and the passenger’s seats are different layers juxtaposed in the same picture plane. There is also a juxtaposition of time, past and present, as for the Western eye these curtains and seats seem anachronistic in comparison with the modernity of the buildings reflected and appearing in the background. I visited the site and photographed there for several days as the buses were continuously flowing, therefore some of the reflections are captured in different windows. If as Schivelbusch argues, the traveller sees through the apparatus which moves him through the world, then the landscape is framed by that same apparatus. In this series, landscape and apparatus become one, a reflexive modernity. Tatiana Macedo, 2010 |