Artist Statement | Hong Hao

I've been working with a camera since the mid-1980s. At that time, art education was still dominated by figurative realism, and I studied the presentation of works and received technical training at the Academy of Fine Arts. I really wanted to find another way to express myself freely, outside the established art system. Photography was not yet prescribed and I could find a different way and freedom to express my art. Photography is a matter of all at once, the instantaneity created by the shutter. What you want to say can be achieved in a second.

The camera is different from the human eye. The mind chooses to see things, but the camera can capture whatever it sees. Photography is always outside of consciousness. It’s easy to understand why photography has such a strong appeal, because the objective world of the camera and the subjective viewing are different. It is an aid to cognition, it goes beyond the limits of subjective consciousness.

Especially in the 1990s, China was undergoing a social transformation, the economy was oriented towards the market and globalization, and this changed everyone’s perception. Economic transformation, consumerism, materialism began to build up in the environment, influencing personal values. What is a successful life? The ‘80s were more spiritual, and the ‘90s were more materialistic. A new perspective on the visual scope unfolded. It fostered an imagination of the times, a new vision of the future and social change.

In the 1990s, advertising photography was particularly prevalent in public places, influencing many people’s desire to consume. There was a great interest in the product. Images became more elaborate, and the power of photos changed from art to mass images, always changing, flowing, evolving. This is one way of looking at the impact of consumption on the image, which is consistent with the way the economy works.

The backgrounds of both works in the exhibition were advertisements. The swimming pool is from an ad for juice, and the second is page from an interior design magazine. However, my work is not advertising photography, because there is no product. It’s the appropriation of ready-made products, the modification of cooperation, and the recreation of their language and desires. By taking advantage of such factors, the advertisement becomes the material, and the nature of the advertisement becomes something else.

When I first came into contact with photography in the 1980s, photography was a product of Western thought, proving that the world is objective. You need an objective object to prove the objective world—there’s a lot of philosophical thought in it. Later, photography was put into practical use, and the manufacturing of cameras was in the West. Therefore, it was first applied to art in the West . In the beginning, I also looked at the work of different Western photographers, and everyone looked at the world from a different perspective and offered different visions.