Huo Chengju

    A COLLECTION of 98 photographs and four sculptures by Luo Yongjin, professor of photography at the Shanghai branch of the China Academy of Fine Arts, is being displayed at the He Xiangning Art Museum through Nov. 23.

    On the contemporary Chinese art scene, there is probably no other photographer who has formed a peculiar art language and style by keeping a keen interest in architecture over the past two decades.

    Born in Beijing in 1960, Luo has been interested in creative photography since the early 1980s, but his photographic approach and style are radically different from the majority of documentary and landscape photographers in China.

    Luo initially achieved fame with a series of black-and-white photographs documenting the lives of ordinary people from behind a detached, neutral lens. He then abandoned figure photography entirely, embarking on a long series of architectural shots devoid of people.

    Luo began to photograph new private buildings in the ancient city of Luoyang, Henan Province, in the early 1990s. In 2002, he started to turn his lens to private buildings in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, and century-old tower buildings in Kaiping, Guangdong Province. He also photographed various styles of new government buildings while traveling throughout the country in recent years.

    Behind the apparent objectivity of Luo’s approach is a complicated mixture of sympathy, nostalgia and disdain.

    Without color or human presence, his spaces appear uniformly inhospitable and barren: anonymous urban apartment blocks, ungainly nouveau riche palaces and imposing public spaces.

    Luo’s “New Residence” series documents attempts by the emerging middle class to gain face, or public dignity, by building private villas in Luoyang and Hangzhou.

    Meanwhile Luo’s “Government Buildings” series profiles the kind of squat, almost aggressively plain structures that seem designed to impart a sense of authority.

    Luo’s photos also showcase the fanciful, fairground style of new gas stations, now serving hundreds of thousands of new drivers through the country. The castle turrets or pagoda roofs of these tacky structures contrast markedly with their drab highway surroundings.

    The rationale behind Luo’s photographic approach is closely related to people’s common experiences of social and cultural upheavals in the aftermath of China’s economic reform and implementation of opening-up policies three decades ago.

    Emerging as an artist known for his specific regard for humanity’s search for existential meaning, Luo maintains a realistic, introspective and critical stance in his works and also silently encourages his audience to appreciate them in the same way.