Liu Zheng (Chinese, b. 1969), Two Miners, Datong, Shanxi Province, (from The Chinese), negative 1996, printed 2006, Gelatin silver print, Museum purchase, Wachenheim Family Fund, M.2006.5.34, Photo courtesy the artist and Pekin Fine Arts.

Liu Zheng (Chinese, b. 1969), Peking Opera Actress Holding Fan (from The Chinese), Beijing, 1996, Gelatin Silver Print, 46 x 46 cm, Edition 10, 37 x 37 cm, Edition 20, Photo courtesy the artist and Pekin Fine Arts.

Liu Zheng (Chinese, b. 1969), Mentally Handicapped Patients (from The Chinese), 1996, Beijing Gelatin Silver Print, 46 x 46 cm, Edition 10, 37 x 37 cm, Edition 20, Photo courtesy the artist and Pekin Fine Arts.

Liu Zheng (Chinese, b. 1969), Dying Farmer, Xihaigou, Ningxia Province, 1996 (from The Chinese), Gelatin Silver Print, 46 x 46 cm, Edition 10, 37 x 37 cm, Edition 20. Photo courtesy the artist and Pekin Fine Arts.

Williams College Museum of Art
15 Lawrence Hall Drive
413-597-2429
Williamstown
Liu Zheng: The Chinese
November 15, 2008-April 26, 2009

Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) presents four related exhibitions focusing on the role of photography and film to reflect, and potentially construct, cultural identity. Each of these artists have defined a group — whether by race, class, occupation, or neighborhood — and depicted individuals in a manner that moves beyond portraiture. Instead, each artist explores personal identity in the larger context of social groups.

Liu Zheng: The Chinese features all 120 photographs taken by Liu Zheng between 1994 and 2001.  These photographs, recently acquired by the Williams College Museum of Art, portray the Chinese people and culture during a time of momentous change; his subjects are an array of characters, including coal miners, Taoist priests, Buddhist monks, prostitutes, convicts, and even waxwork figures from historical museums.  These individuals come from all walks of life and every social station, but Liu also included unexpected photographs of those who are dead, dying, decrepit, or disabled.  These tragic images illustrate the darker side of China’s cultural history and the ways in which history replays itself in contemporary Chinese society. This is the first time that all 120 photographs will be on view together at the museum.

In 1994, Liu Zheng began photographing moments in which archetypal Chinese figures are encountered in contemporary incarnations — and often in extreme and unexpected situations. The resulting series, The Chinese, portrays a society wrestling with the contradictions between traditional culture and modernization. The series presents a broad cross section of society including the wealthy, the poor, transsexuals, coal miners, opera performers, as well as waxwork figures in historical museums.

From 1991 to 1997, Zheng worked as a photojournalist for Workers’ Daily, one of China’s most widely distributed newspapers, in a culture where photography was historically linked with political propaganda and Communist ideology rather than a documentary tradition that equated photography with truth. He began work on The Chinese during an explosive period of change and growth in the contemporary art scene in China catalyzed by national policies of reform. Drawing on his background, Zheng utilizes photography as a tool for constructing false reality. The lighting and poses in these square format photographs all appear candid, but in fact, staged tableaux and spontaneous images coexist in the series.

Influenced by both Diane Arbus and August Sander, The Chinese presents the viewer with a personalized study of Chinese culture, concentrating on the dark side of its psychology. Through his photographs Zheng performs an intricate balancing act between harsh reality and romanticism, between engagement and detachment, seeking to reconstitute Chinese history in the process.

Liu Zheng was born in Wuqiang County, Hebei Province, China, in 1969, and grew up in Datong, a mining town in Shanxi Province. He currently lives and works in Beijing. His work has been exhibited extensively abroad, including a one-person exhibition at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, in 2001, and is included in the touring exhibition Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video From China in 2004; Strangers: The First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in 2003; The Chinese at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, in 2004; and the 50 th Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy, in 2003.

Beyond the Familiar: Photography and the Construction of Community provokes dialogue about the role of photography in the construction of cultural identity. The exhibition brings together 10 photography projects from around the world that span the history of the medium. These projects portray individuals from distinct cultural, economic, and professional groups.

Fiona Tan’s ambitious video installation, Countenance, takes as its inspiration August Sander’s lifelong project, Citizens of the Twentieth Century. While Sander photographed people living and working in Germany with the goal of creating an archive that represented all types of people, Tan updates Sander’s project in video, both echoing and investigating his ideas.

Independent Film and Ethnography surveys a variety of independent film projects. Films include Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of the North (1922), Luis Bunuel’s Las Hurdes: Land Without Bread (1932), Dennis O’Rourke’s Cannibal Tours (1987), Jean Rouch’s Jaguar (1957), Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds (1965), Timothy Asch’s The Ax Fight (1975), and Ruben Ortiz-Torres’s Frontierland / Fronterilandia (1995). These films range from pure ethnography to critiques of the ethnographic impulse.

"Together, these four exhibitions explore how photographers use multiple images to portray the complexity of culture," says exhibition curator John Stomberg. "Making comparisons between these projects, between photography and film, allows the richness of each project to emerge with their inherent contradictions intact. It is up to the viewer to think critically about how each photographer portrayed each group and to decide what can, and cannot, be determined from photography about race, class, occupation, and character."

These four exhibitions were organized by John Stomberg, Deputy Director/Chief Curator and Lecturer in Art with assistance by Aimee Hirz, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2007, Tianyue Jiang and Amanda Hellman, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2008, and Andrea Gyorody, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, Class of 2009; Jeanette Campbell, Williams College, Class of 2008, and Natalie Diaz, Williams College, Class of 2009.