Liu Xiaodong is a 45-year-old photographer from northern China, who now lives in Beijing. This enormous book documents hundreds of his photographs. Each photo can be considered a snapshot, loose framing, with a spontaneous feel. No single photo stands out, or is titled. Instead they work together to illustrate Liu’s friends, family, immediate surroundings, and attitudes towards China as a whole. There are a few short essays and an interview, conducted by renowned artist and curator Ai Weiwei, which is incomprehensible, perhaps lost in translation. They go back and forth, at length, about subjects with seemingly no relevance–their age, names of relatives. The format of the book also makes a few stumbles: the page numbers are inconsistent and scattered, the cover immediately buckles under the sheer weight of the book, and the text is set in wide columns, making it undesirable to read. These faults easily wash away when contrasted with the brilliance of the photographs. The Richness of Life so accurately portrays China through Liu’s eyes you begin to feel as if you know everything about Liu, where he’s been, what he’s seen, and how he feels about it. There is an expansive range of subjects: friends, family, strangers, artists, industrial workers, children, and transvestite prostitutes. The subjects eat, drink, gamble, walk on stilts, and get arrested. A group of men strangely play with each other’s bathing suits and penises. Children kill snakes and then carefully drain the blood. Somehow, Liu’s work read as sincere instead of absurd.
– Chris Force
The Richness of Life: The Personal Photographs of Contemporary Chinese Artist Liu Xiaodong
Liu Xiaodong, Ai Weiwei, Britta Erickson, Charles Merewether
Paperback 590 pages
$95, Timezone 8
Timezone 8: www.timezone8.com