Last week I got an invite to roll with some musician buddies up at Midi Festival and decided it’d be a great opportunity to grab a camera and capture the people and fashions that only “the biggest rock festival” in China can provide.
Undeterred by the lack of a fucking functional website, the promise of awe-inspiring traffic, and the threat of hours of shitty metal, I took a whiskey-soaked ride up to the Beijing Yuyang International Ski Resort and brought back photos from the Pulp Fiction/Sid and Nancy/The Last Waltz/skate video some kids from Ohio would make/Betty Boop/Hot Topic Lookbook fever dream that was Midi Festival 2013.
I daresay it might be the best thing Sina/Beijing Review/China.org has done. Go give them some love. UPDATE, 3/27, 2:15 pm: Photographer Wei Yao explains how it was done. (H/T Malcolm Moore)
Kudos go out to The Atlantic for the launch of its new section, China Channel. In the introduction, overseeing editor Matt Schiavenza describes this country as “a defining story in the contemporary world,” and articulates the desire “to sustain a closer, clearer exploration.” They start with a collection of pictures from Tom Carter, author of CHINA: Portrait of a... Read more »
Photographer Thomas Arne Strand alerted us last week to a collection of pictures he took of the Drum and Bell neighborhood, which he posted last Sunday. As he writes: These photographs were taken at the beginning of January (been traveling and unable to upload before), after I learnt that the wrecking ball would soon come to... Read more »
Yao Lu’s “New Landscapes” photos depict mountains, mist, rivers and trees, the cornerstones of classical Chinese painting, but take a closer look. What’s that trash? That construction netting? Via Michael Zhang of Peta Pixel: Yao arranges each scene shown in his large color photos, using the landfill materials to create various landscapes. He then photographs... Read more »
In Foreign Policy’s introduction to its latest slideshow of rare photos from Tibet during the Cultural Revolution, the line that jumps out to me is the last one: “This installment of FP’s Once Upon a Time series shows the Land of Snows from a long-forgotten period, when Tibet’s enemy wasn’t China, but itself.” The line, I’m sure,... Read more »
No Pants Subway Ride, the annual event launched in 2002 by New York City-based Improv Everywhere, has spread to more than 60 cities, in which subway commuters strip off their pants on January 13 just because. Thousands participated this year in New York, hundreds in Mexico City, and, um, maybe a dozen or so in Shanghai?... Read more »
If you haven’t read Murong Xuecun’s piece about China’s Great Famine revisionists — those who doubt even the textbook figure that around 15 million people died prematurely from 1959-62 due to hunger — start here. Two other stories on this subject are also worth your attention. Foreign Policy, which ran Murong’s declamation, has a slideshow... Read more »
