Photographer captures life along Suzhou Creek
Print Edition
FOR nearly two decades, Shanghai photographer Lu Yuanmin has focused his lens on everyday life in Shanghai’s streets.
Lu used to work at the cultural center of the city’s Putuo District. He commuted by bike for some 20 years starting in 1980, always keeping his eyes peeled for interesting photo opportunities along the way.
His route took him along both banks of the Suzhou Creek, an area rife with human drama ready to be captured on film.
Many of these images were later displayed in Lu’s 2006 solo exhibition.
A more complete selection of Lu’s photographs taken during the 1980s and 1990s are now on view in a new retrospective exhibition.
“The Shanghai Times of Lu Yuanmin” at HS Gallery features 63 of Lu’s photos, including signature images from his “Suzhou Creek” and “Shanghai Families” series.
The Shanghai native told Shanghai Daily that he’s “obsessed” with capturing life’s “little changes.”
His “Shanghai Families” series, as the name suggests, peeks inside the homes of local families in the 1990s.
According to Lu, he was acquainted with all of the families he photographed. As he explained, he was “too shy to knock on the doors of strangers.”
Many of the homes he visited changed little in the decades prior to his visits. In fact, Lu once saw one of his photos in a book by author and art critics Chen Danqing, with a caption describing it as “a typical Shanghai family in the 1950s.”
“It was actually taken in the 1990s,” he laughed.
This series came to an end in the year 2000, when many families started to renovate and refurbish their old homes.
These days, Lu’s photos have taken on new significance for their historical value, and won their creator praise as a documentarian.
“In the first seven or eight years, I struggled with find the right style and approach to my photography,” Lu recalled.
“One day I suddenly realize that the essence of photography is going back the roots. When a person first picks up a camera, all he or she wants to do is to take pictures of people and things around them. Despite all the approaches I’ve tried before, I wasn’t taking photos for myself.”
Other works by Lu are also on display, including some experimental images featuring multiple-exposures.
The show at HS Gallery runs through May 4.
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