Hu Yang

Shanghai living (series) 2004–2005

In January 2004 Hu Yang commenced his encyclopedic project Shanghai living, which photographically documents over 500 families from Shanghai, China. Interviewing and photographing foreign residents, Shanghainese, the wealthy, middle-class and impoverished, Hu asked each participant the same three questions: ‘What is your current living condition?’; ‘What is your most desired thing to do if without any particular concern on time, money and energy?’; and ‘What is the biggest torture now in your life?’.

By turning the camera upon the internal lives and home environments of his subjects, Hu also documented the frantic modernisation of Shanghai, one of the most rapidly changing cities in the world. The attendant problems, including unemployment, the commodification of labour, and housing shortages, are also apparent in these individuals’ stories — from the obsessive consumerism, the vast gap between rich and poor, to the desire to create an enclosed world in the home which will shut out the external world.

Hovering between objective documentary and incisive social comment, these photographs were taken using a Contax 645N camera and colour negative film with a wide-angle lens, enabling Hu to capture the home environments and to convey a sense of intimacy and depth.