Exhibition initiated & curated at GoEast Mandarin. Planned June 2021, photographed July & August 2021, exhibited September 2021.

In Michelangelo Antonioni’s documentary Chung Kuo, an Italian camera crew travels through China in 1972, and all they do is point the camera at things and people, and film. Antonioni remarks on Shanghai: ”It has changed profoundly within the timespan of a single generation”, and he said that in 1972. If he could only see China today.

It signifies that daily life and ‘老百姓Lǎobǎixìng’ (common people) make more interesting subjects than landmarks, because landmarks don’t change a lot over time, while supermarkets, streets, living rooms, balconies & people do.

You wouldn’t think a trip to the supermarket or a walk across the street is important, but it is. So take an honest photo before it is all gone.

In ten or twenty years time, such photos will show a Shanghai that’s no longer here.

These 50+ photos are taken with disposable cameras, by Chinese & non-Chinese living in Shanghai, taken in the summer of 2021:
Justin, Yvonne, Ryan, Leigh, Liss, Lisa, Kathryn, Lia, Lynn, Vinny, Victoria & Jaap.