Surveillance is intervention. My view is that photographing is not for practitioners to intervene in community, but to approach people observantly with kindness and equanimity, being at home in unfamiliar places. And, at ease with amazing people living out their modernity in dignity whilst maintaining tradition as an enormous resource.
Photographing through a time of hyper-rapid industrialization that shapes modern China and includes in this case Inner Mongolia, draws the photographed, photographer and viewer into a zone of inquiry concerning everyday people, those left in villages and those working feverishly around the edge and within the metropolis. It strikes a character of ambiguity, a leading question: what peace, what harmony may be found in spaces between the villages and the megalopolises of modernized China?”
Wild Spirits and Warm Hearts has been a great educational and creative project that, along with participation of all WSU students and staff involved, allowed my personal contribution for the didactic program to include photographs I made on our journey through Inner Mongolia as part of my long-term project Everyday Dignity – Between the village and the metropolises of modernized China.
