"I had never used a serious camera before, knew nothing about digital photography or Photoshop, had never been to Asia and didn’t know a word of Chinese.”
So says Frenchman Patrick Wack on his 2006 move to China to become a photographer.
He began shooting street fashion in Shanghai and Beijing, and then captured a series of worker portraits during the preparation for the 2010 Shanghai Expo.
“I started using additional lighting and the next year traveled to four different provinces to build a series of montage portraits called Kingdoms,” the 35-year-old explains, saying he was “interested in that fine line between documentary and more stylized imagery.”
These were the steps toward the more elaborate production and aesthetic in his latest project Here, There Are Men. “The desire to build a meaningful series of environmental portraits about China has been with me for quite some time, but finding the right style and concept took me a few years.”
The starting point of the series was a trip to Yunnan and Tibet in April 2012, and the pilgrimage of the Kawagarbo.
“It is one of the sacred Tibetan Buddhist pilgrimages that takes the believers from Yunnan over the Tibetan border and back to Yunnan. It is an excruciating 15-day mountain trek that takes you over 5,000-meter-high passes and everything is done on foot.”
Wack says the trip wasn’t a great success photographically, but it was during the pilgrimage that he discovered the style he was looking for in his images. Wanting to show both extremes of China – the very rural and the very urban – he next went to Chongqing, a favorite location.
“There is a cinematic quality to it; it’s pure science fiction. It looks dirty and chaotic, a concrete jungle that combines farming areas within a futuristic metropolis, with its dozens of insane bridges and never-ending elevated highways, its dense smog and brown river flowing through. And among all of that, millions of people going about their lives like it is a normal human environment.
Whether it be Chongqing or Inner Mongolia, Wack says he is looking for places with an unusual edge in terms of landscapes and people.
“I’m trying to create visually striking images,” he says. “I spend hours walking or driving around looking for something or someone who will trigger my interest. It can be a face, a landscape, an odd situation or that one ray of light that will make me stop. And then I build around it.”
> Here, There Are Men by Patrick Wack exhibits until July 31; Cafe Zarah, 42 Gulou Dong Dajie, Xicheng 鮫냘혐뮬짜땜댕쌍42뵀 (8403 9807) For more on his work visit www.patrick-wack.com
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