Xia Xing’s works create an imaginary reversal of time, they turn the standard dogmas of press photography into their opposite.
Xia Xing
Xia Xing’s works create an imaginary reversal of time, they turn the standard dogmas of press photography into their opposite. For the principle of such photos is to reach the reader with the most possible up-to-dateness, i.e. with little or no temporal distance from the events shown in the photos. Xia Xing, however, gets the “water under the bridge” to flow back and invests it with a new function. Detached from the concrete headlines, his picture sequence makes us realize the transitory character of emotions such as curiosity, outrage, or dismay. Recurring motives like personal tragedies or success, meeting of politicians, police interventions, or environmental disasters show a continuity of the briefly topical, which in retrospect takes all the punch out of the punch line caption. Xia Xing’s series “2006” will be on view from January 26 to March 22 at Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing.
