From ARTSPER MAGAZINE
Poetry, sensuality, beauty and melancholy!
Revolutionizing nude photography!
This Artsper article is a tribute to its artist, a talented photographer known for the originality of his nude photographs. His work, as vivid as it is ephemeral, was an admiration for the sensuality and naked beauty of life, accompanied by melancholy. He died before his 30th birthday, but his poetic art lives on. He became famous for his vivid nude portraits.
Ren Hang revolutionized nude photography by treating the female and male body equally, with nonchalance, poetry, and humor. He interwoven the bodies of his models to create captivating and moving photographs. His art was a reflection on nudity, eroticism, beauty, and, more broadly, life itself. His photographs were mirrors of his troubled soul. He has stated that he became a photographer because “photography fills the emptiness of my ears.”
He kept a diary which he called "Mild Depression"
Ren Hang dealt with his crippling anxiety and worries through writing. In his lyrical lines, at once sad and disturbing, he told readers: “Every day I wake up in the morning wondering why I’m still alive.” His poems and raw personal notes, related to depression, filled an entire section on his website.
He always used the same camera for his photographs.
Ren Hang worked only with a simple analog Minolta camera, easy to use and carry around; he sought to take pictures as spontaneously as possible, by pressing just one button. This spontaneity helped him create beautiful and authentic images: without assistants or artificial lighting, his photographs were fragments of life captured in an instant.
His work was highly controversial in China, his country of origin.
His erotic and entertaining photographs did not please the Chinese government, which censored them several times. Ren Hang's work even led to his arrest several times during photo sessions. Although he was considered "dangerous" for communist ideology, Ren Hang himself did not see himself as a rebel. He declared: "I like to think that my artistic practice goes beyond the political realm."
He studied marketing, not photography.
Ren Hang found studying marketing boring, so he started photographing his friends and dorm mates to feed his newfound passion. He would organize photo shoots with amateur models, placing them in the most natural positions possible.
His models were his friends, and later, visitors from his website.
He believed that mutual respect was essential to taking the most natural photos. For this reason, he often included close friends – even his mother – in the photos. The same went for people who applied online: before taking the photo, he always spoke to them.
He has organized an exhibition of empty frames
Due to censorship by Chinese authorities, who banned an exhibition with the theme “Suspicions of Sex,” he responded by organizing an exhibition with empty frames. He later said: “The political ideologies in my photographs have nothing to do with China. It is Chinese politics that try to interfere with my art.”
Most of his audience was outside China.
Although it was not to his taste in his home country, he was warmly received outside China. He exhibited at FIAC in 2014, at the Foam Museum in Amsterdam, and at the Stockholm Museum of Photography from 2016 to 2017. He also collaborated with fashion magazines and created the cover of “Sex” for Inrock magazine in the summer of 2014.
He has been compared to Ai Weiwei and Ryan McGinley.
His style is often compared to that of American photographer Ryan McGinley, although many consider Ren Hang's work to be more "heavy." He has also been compared to Chinese artist Ai Weiwei for the image he represents. Both have been censored by the Chinese government and collaborated in 2013 on the exhibition "FUCKOFF" at the Groninger Museum, Netherlands. Weiwei paid tribute to Hang after his death.
TASCHEN published his monograph in January 2017.
This edition from TASCHEN is the only selection that includes all of Ren Hang's art, featuring his most famous photographs and many others previously unpublished.
Article source:
https://blog.artsper.com/en/a-closer-look/ren-hang-the-tragic-destiny-of-a-photography-prodigy/
Photo credits:
Untitled, 2016 ©Courtesy of Estate of Ren Hang and stieglitz19
