Blindspot Gallery is delighted to present Chinese photographer Zhang Xiao's award-winning series They, which won the Three Shadows Photography Award in 2010. This will be Zhang's second exhibition at the gallery, following "Coastline" last year.

Zhang created They series in over 3 years during his time working as a photojournalist in Chongqing city. Chongqing, as the largest and fastest growing city in China, probably representing the most extreme example of urbanization and rapid development in the country. Zhang photographed the people he encountered on his daily travels around the city. The chracters in They are the ordinary people in real life - they carry out all kinds of mundane activities in public venues. In Zhang's images, these ordinary people become the protagonists in the scenes they occupy, often seemingly departing from reality and entering a performance state.

They series perhaps reveal some loss of balance and normality caused by rapid development of modern Chinese society. "Each of them has their own ordinary life, yet in the images they appear bizarre and absurd, as if they belong to another planet and are completely unique", Zhang said. Apart from its documentary nature, They series also reflects the artist's strong subjective point of view about contemporary life in China: kitschy, absurd, surreal and humorous.

Zhang used a basic, low technology Holga camera and expired films to photograph They, his choice of equipment enhances his expectation and imagination during the making, and increaes the instability and uncertainty of the visual quality of the images. The effect of aberration and vignetting lead the viewers into a dreamy state, in Zhang's words "This is not a real world, In a moment, they surpass themselves in reality just like sleepwalking."

Image: © Zhang Xiao, Blindspot Gallery