Covering a fifth of China's land area and feeding a third of its population, the Yangtze which is the longest river in China, passes through Wuhan and has become a symbolic presence.

As a person who was born and raised in Wuhan, I grew up with the surging river, and the Yangtze River, which has not changed for millions of years, carries the life memories of generations. I had been interacting with it from a very subjective point of view, without properly observing and thinking about the universal objective significance presented in this natural space. Therefore, I hope to re-observe this amazing space from the perspective of spectator through the lens.

In this project, I took two rivers and four shoresides as geographical clues and used a 6X7 medium format film camera to try to explore the relationship between the Yangtze River and human being by recording the river and the land.

As the place where people interact most directly and closely with the Yangtze River,Marshland seems to be a utopian space. swimming in the river, fishing by the shore, picnicking on the land, flying kite, reading Bible on the rock, the abandoned docks and household items, the urn washed by the river, plants that show up when the tide goes out and so on all of this seemingly unrelated elements is happening in the utopian space close interaction, shows people, city and natural state of interaction.

I watch to pull away from the point of view of out to observe this space, the tree, the grass, the fish, the kite, the person are part of the scenery, is the one thing in all things, "What is the water, the origin of all things, the clan of all beings", water scour the reef, stack up sand, also raises human, it is into the blood, water is an indispensable source of life that we hardly realize


Our perception, memory, knowledge of the world are made up of the most basic material, As a collection of matter, this space also carries everyone’s experience, While describing the interaction state, I also hope to use images to find and rouse the individual memories of the audience and the collection of individual memories constitutes the collective memory of the human being of the Yangtze River and even nature. These memory fragments are like traces of human activities which has constructed the changes of the Yangtze River for thousands of years. This is the reflection about life, about the land, about homeland and spiritual world.


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Zhishang Lian