Hessler, P: Chinese Sentiment

In recent years, China has proffered tantalizingly fertile landscapes to photographers exploring the socioeconomic impact of its arrival as a superpower. Such projects typically hew closely to well-established narratives, revealing an obvious truth: that China is undergoing a radical wave of transformational changes.In his first monograph, Chinese Sentiment, Shen Wei has performed a radical act in its own right by sidestepping all such cliché. Instead, he presents a vision of his homeland that digs deep beneath the surface, plumbing the psychological shades of gray, and finding a nation ambivalent to its perpetual state of suspension between past and future. Running counter to virtually every Western interpretation, Shen Wei reveals the human scale of China: a lone figure observed through the trees; the stolen glance of a young girl; a moment of repose in the bedroom. With nuanced observation and a serene visual style marked with wit and compassion, the seventy-five images in Chinese Sentiment render a complex portrait of modern China. Employing the language of photography in a manner both dreamlike and cinematic in scope, Chinese Sentiment gracefully limns the interior life of a nation in the throes of epic change.