These photographs are fictions. The figures within these scenes were selected from hundreds of frames shot of each location. By selectively adding and removing characters from my compositions I craft narratives that straddle the line between fact and fiction. This process opens the work to a tremendous amount of decision-making opportunity, allowing for the creation of a personal vision of the world that would otherwise be unattainable in a single photograph.
I see this work as a depiction of a world that borders on the edge of the possible - theatrics of the everyday, in a way, or a tableaux of the street. Drawing on a sense of the “heightened moment” as seen in 20th century street photography, as well as the humanistic landscapes of pre-modern Europe, these are my efforts to bring classical romanticism into the digital era.
These pictures work together to tell the story of public life in Beijing, and the cross-currents of economic and cultural change. The moments within the images are fictionalized and even romanticized in order to tell stories within the larger story.