Chen Ronghui Captures the Broken Dreams of Chinese Youth
Born in Lishui, a small town in China’s Zhejiang province, photojournalist turned art photographer Chen Ronghui initially found himself drawn to the medium of photography at a young age.
“The first time I picked up a camera was in high school,” he recalls. “The local government had just built a photography museum — the first of its kind in the country — and I still remember the otherworldly feeling of looking through a viewfinder for the first time.”
His photojournalistic work, which investigates the individual within developing China, has been covered by the likes of National Geographic, New York Times and Time Magazine.
Along the line, however, Chen realized that his fate lay with art photography rather than photojournalism.
His series “Freezing Land” documents the hardships of life in China’s historically poorer northeastern regions. Chen travelled through five cities in the region from 2016 to 2019, capturing lives in towns such as Yichun in Heilongjiang province, Fushun in Liaoning province and Longjing in Jilin province. The project began in December of 2016, and saw Chen return to the region during the winter months over the following years.
The project is a fascinating investigation of young people based in the region, turning the lens on those on the verge of moving away for work or to study at university. Chen chose to focus specifically on young people for this reason, teasing out the anxieties of life in these border towns.
Desolation is a tangible theme in this series — a mixture of harsh and snowy landscapes juxtaposed with images of young adults smoking cigarettes in the wintry outdoors, a boy standing over a pile of empty green beer bottles, and another young male dressed in women’s clothes and holding a black wig against his knee.
“This [series] made me realize that I’m not just photographing the lost ‘Chinese Dream’ on this freezing northeastern land,” he says, “but also the uncertainty we young people, as individuals, are facing under today’s collectivism in China."
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