For this photo-focused project, OCAT Xi’an invited the Shanghai-based British photographer Liz Hingley to bring her eye to creating a portrait of Xi’an today – understanding portrait in the widest sense of looking at a place and capturing something distinctive of its essence. A stranger to the city, during her initial visit, Liz Hingley was struck by Xi’an’s rich cultural history. This impression prompted her interest in looking at how this history is being passed on and transformed through the recent generations. Her photographic journey was guided by exchanges that she shared with the young people she encountered, and who were largely part of Xi’an’s distinctive music scene. Liz spent time at the unique Shaanxi Artistic Vocational College, famed for teaching the “authentic” Qing Opera style of performance to 300 Shaanxi young people every year. Sensitive to the significance of music within Xi’an’s culture, Liz also captured the fans at the Strawberry Music Festival in the summer of 2016. She discovered “Return to Zero”, a self-sustaining ecological community established in and around centuries old cave houses by its native son Rafael Luo.
“Resonance” projects a fusion of the old and the new, both in its subject matter and medium. The resulting photographs explore the weaving together of tradition with contemporary life. In keeping with the blend of traditions with the present, of the overlap where old meet news, Liz captured her images with an old Seagull camera, the well-known Chinese brand, and using expired film that was purchased online via Taobao. The rolls of film have been processed at Johnny Zhang’s photo studio in Xi’an, which overlooks the ancient city wall.
