In Pavia, Zeng Yi's photographs are on display at the Castello Visconteo

From February 23 to April 7, 2019, the Castello Visconteo in Pavia is dedicating a monographic exhibition to Zeng Yi (Jinan, 1949), one of the most important contemporary Chinese photographers. The exhibition, titled Zeng Yi’s China. Images of a Recent Past, is a journey into China through the eyes of one of its leading artists today.

Among the leading figures in Chinese photography of the decades at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries, Zeng Yi has documented a China that today seems to us to contrast with the technological and hyper-industrialized image of large megacities such as Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. What he witnesses is, in fact, a country of small rural villages, places almost completely abandoned by adults who left in search of fortune for the large urban centers, and inhabited by old people and children living in essential conditions, on the margins of a society that, in the eyes of the world, seems, instead, to be developing at an exorbitant rate of growth.

A native of Shandong, the cradle of Confucianism, a coastal province in the easternmost part of the People’s Republic of China, Zeng Yi nurtured his ambition to become a photographer from an early age, a passion passed on to him by his teacher father, who had given him a book on the photographic methods and techniques of Wu Yinxian, one of the photographers who coined the public image of Mao. From the early 1970s, having perfected his developing techniques and the secrets of the craft, Zeng rode his bicycle through the countryside of Shandong and began taking pictures of families, weddings, and children; gradually becoming more and more convinced that photography can be used not only to record the beauty of landscapes and the expressiveness of people’s faces, but also to document social reality and become aware of the responsibilities and obligations that each individual has to the community.

These are predominantly (but not only) black and white images, where technical quality is always accompanied by a high degree of humanity. They document the everyday life of rural communities through a series of group or individual portraits (farmers, ranchers, fishermen, artisans) caught in the context of a reality that still appears to be dominated by customs and traditions in stark contrast to the lifestyle of urban centers, a reality at risk of extinction whose memory must be preserved.

Zeng Yi’s exhibition is organized by the Culture, Education and Youth Policy Department of the City of Pavia and hosted at the Castello Visconteo from February 23 to April 7, 2019. Hours: Tuesday to Friday from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Full ticket 4 euros. For all information you can visit the official website of the Pavia Civic Museums.

In Pavia, Zeng Yi's photographs are on display at the Castello Visconteo

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