shashasha

Tokyo-based Chinese photographer Wang Lu’s brilliant, touching series intertwines a portrait of her family with the ongoing changes in her hometown.

In 2019, Wang Lu returned to her hometown in China for the first time in years. Through rapid urban expansion projects, the city has changed almost beyond recognition. But the people still dressed and spoke the same way as before, despite the ongoing modernization of their city.
When Wang Lu was 12 years old, her father was in an accident that caused lasting brain damage, reducing his intelligence to that of a child and changing his perception of his closest family members. The accident also affected his memory, and his recollections of his daughter are stuck in time.

In documentarian, lucid photographs, Wang creates a vivid portrait of her father, his mood swings, his attitude towards his daughter and his family, but also of her resilient and distressed mother. In “Frozen are the Winds of Time” Wang Lu ties the personal story of her family and of her father’s unusual condition to the ongoing changes in the city in which they live, overlaying the rapid modernization of its architecture and atmosphere as well as the population struggling to keep up with the pace of these changes. Despite the almost disinterested nature of her photographs, Wang approaches the question of being forced to move on, to move forward as the past clings on with affection and humanity.

“Frozen are the Winds of Time” includes an afterword by the artist as well as short texts by Japanese photographer Ai Iwane and Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke (all texts included in Japanese, Chinese and English).