Ren Hang
Ren Hang, a Chinese
photographer whose erotic images of naked young models arranged in provocative
poses offered an unfiltered glimpse into the intimate lives of Chinese youth,
died on February 24, 2017, in Beijing. He was 29.
Dian Hanson, an editor of a monograph of
Mr. Ren’s work that was published in January by Taschen,
confirmed his death. The newspaper The Beijing News said Mr. Ren had
jumped off the 28th floor of a building. Friends said he had suffered from
cyclical depression.
Every year I have the same
hope: to die early,” Mr. Ren wrote in late January on the Chinese social media
site Sina Weibo. “I hope that can happen this year.”
In his brief career Mr. Ren
honed a distinctly bold visual style that was also subversive, if only because
of the social environment in which he worked. In his photos, a person sits on
the grass holding what appears to be a disembodied head; a man applies red
lipstick to his penis; two naked women hug high in a tree.
“It is very difficult to shoot nudes in
China,” Mr. Ren said in a 2014 interview with the French fashion magazine Purple.
“People are more bound by traditional and conservative attitudes toward the
body. They think it’s a degradation, even a demoralization, to show what they
think should be private. They generally abhor nudity here. We hide the body in
our culture.”
Using point-and-shoot film
cameras and photographing mostly his friends, Mr. Ren built up an extensive
body of work in which clothing was a rarity and gender and sexuality an
afterthought. Body parts are presented in every form: erect, limp, hairy,
shaved, stacked, twisted, intertwined, bent, pinched.
“He had this very clean
style,” Ms. Hanson said. “Very formal composition, but for these outrageous
subjects with these beautiful, innocent, kind of sexually ambiguous individuals
who were clearly not professional models but who were all tremendously
appealing.”
Even as Mr. Ren rose to
international fame, his photos retained a found-on-the-street quality, as if
the viewer had stumbled upon a bunch of pictures taken by someone just messing
around with his friends.
But because of the sexually explicit nature of his work, Mr. Ren often ran into problems with the authorities in China, which maintains strict prohibitions on pornographic images. In a 2013 interview with Vice Japan, he recalled having one exhibition in China shut down by censors on “suspicion of sex.” He was also arrested several times for shooting nude photos outdoors and once, he said, in the name of “group licentiousness.”
Ren Hang, naked in his bathroom
But because of the sexually explicit nature of his work, Mr. Ren often ran into problems with the authorities in China, which maintains strict prohibitions on pornographic images. In a 2013 interview with Vice Japan, he recalled having one exhibition in China shut down by censors on “suspicion of sex.” He was also arrested several times for shooting nude photos outdoors and once, he said, in the name of “group licentiousness.”
His numerous encounters
with the authorities led many to draw comparisons to other subversive artists,
most notably Ai Weiwei, the Chinese activist and provocateur. But Mr. Ren resisted
such comparisons, stating over and over in interviews that his photos were
never meant to be political and emphasizing instead his deep connection to
China and to Chinese culture.
“I don’t really view my
work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context or political
context,” he told Taschen. “I don’t intentionally push boundaries. I just do
what I do.”
Born on May 30, 1987, in a
suburb of Changchun, a provincial capital in northeastern China, Mr. Ren had by
his own account a relatively trouble-free childhood. (“Maybe too normal,” he once told a reporter who had asked him how he had fallen
into depression.) His father was a railway worker, and his mother, who later
modeled for Mr. Ren in a memorable series, “My Mum”, worked at a printing house.
At 17, he moved to Beijing where he began taking nude photos while studying advertising. “We were living in cramped dorm rooms of four people, so I would frequently see my roommates in the nude,” he told an interviewer in 2014. “It was a natural and easy subject because I was shooting everything anyway.”
Ren Hang
At 17, he moved to Beijing where he began taking nude photos while studying advertising. “We were living in cramped dorm rooms of four people, so I would frequently see my roommates in the nude,” he told an interviewer in 2014. “It was a natural and easy subject because I was shooting everything anyway.”
He began to show his work
in 2009, mostly in small group exhibitions in China. After several years of
exhibiting and publishing his own books, he started attracting international
attention.
In recent years he had
begun to take on more commissions, shooting for major fashion brands and
magazines as well as for the singer and rapper Frank Ocean’s Boys Don’t Cry fan
magazine.
At his death, Mr. Ren’s
work was being shown in two separate solo exhibitions, at the Fotografiska Museum in Stockholm (until April 2) and at
the Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam (until March 12), as
well as in a dual show with the artist Li Xinjian at the KWM Artcenter in
Beijing (recently extended to March 24). His photos were shown in more than 20
solo and 70 group shows around the world.
Mr. Ren was a writer and
poet and kept an account of his experience with depression in a blog, “My Depression,” on
his website.
In one poem, “Gift,”
dated July, 2014, he wrote, in Chinese:
Life is really one
Precious gift
But sometimes I feel that
It has been given to the wrong person
Precious gift
But sometimes I feel that
It has been given to the wrong person
_____________________________
Photos
by Ren Hang
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