The Folds of History, Or the Impression of a City's Crust

This group of pictures was all shot by Nochioka Yoshinobu in Shanghai between 2009 and 2010. Different from Beijing, the ancient capital of China, Shanghai was the first city in China to be affected by the modernization in Europe and America, which led to a dramatic change as well as development in this city.

Since the 19th century, metropolis, as a symbol of modernization, has been explored by various kinds of media. Among them, photographing has always played an essential role. As a matter of fact, photo montage (including constructivism) that was popular at the beginning of the 21th century is a method of visualizing a city's experiences through the image of a cluster of gigantic metropolitan architectures.

However, when the history entered the 1970s, a perception different from the previous view of metropolis emerged, which was marked by an attention to the illusory space or discarded landscape of the metropolis.

Ignasi de Sola-Morales Rubio, a Spanish architect and critic refers to this kind of space as "terrain vague". In those pictures that seem to reflect the very nature of metropolis, people sense a romantic vision of the city vestiges. Nevertheless, this kind of impression and vision vanished all together as history enters the 21st century. Since the rise and fall of a city speeds up suddenly, the concept of urban reconstruction undergoes fundamental transformation. Metropolis, as a landscape, begins a process of everlasting, recurring construction and production.

It is in this very original landscape of modernization, and in the deep folds of the historicized Shanghai that Nochioka Yoshinobu finds China's so-called "new modern times" landscape after 1980s and tries to capture it. His actions are guided neither by the vision of a city drifter nor the perception of a city dweller, but the viewpoint of a witness.

Those apparently quiet metropolitan landscape pictures denote an impression of ever changing metropolis, which can only be reflected in tranquility.

- Taro Amano, Yokohama Museum of Art, Chief Curator