Ren Hang (photographer)

Ren Hang
Born March 30, 1987
Changchun, Jilin, China
Died February 24, 2017 (aged 29)
Beijing, China
Education Bachelor degree in Advertising
Alma mater Communication University of China
Known for photographs about nudity, gender and homosexuality
Notable work My Mum
Website www.renhang.org
Chinese name
Chinese 任航

Ren Hang (Chinese: 任航; March 30, 1987 – February 24, 2017) was a Chinese photographer and poet.[1][2][3] He was born in 1987, in a suburb of Changchun, Jilin province，in northeastern China.[4]

During Hang's incipient career, he was known mostly for nude photographic portraits of his friends. Hang's work is significant for its representation of Chinese sexuality within a heavily censored society.  And for this erotic undertones, Hang was arrested by PRC authorities several times.[5] His art trajectory was backed by the famed contemporary Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, who included Hang in his 2013 Netherlands show, "Fuck Off 2 The Sequel", and curated the photographer's 2014 exhibition in Paris, France.[6][7] His erotic, playful and casual yet provocative expression made him rise to fame worldwide.

Biography

Early life

Hang attended the Communication University of China where he majored in advertising, though his interest quickly turned to photography rather than his studies. In 2007, he began to take pictures of his friends. Ren introduced the reason why he began to shoot in an interview,"It was really boring in college. That's when I first started playing with the camera. I was around 17 or 18".[8] In order to “relieve boredom”, Hang bought a point-and-shoot camera and began shooting nude images of his friends. As a self-taught photographer, he said his style of photography was inspired by the artist Shūji Terayama.[2]

Death

Hang was also known to be suffering from depression. He posted an article titled "My depression" on his blog, recording the fear, anxiety and internal conflicts he suffered from. Hang took his own life by jumping from the 28th floor of a building in Beijing. [9][10]

Works

Photography

Hang first began taking pictures of his roommates and friends in 2007, shooting them in the nude as all were close and seeking excitement. In an interview, Hang also admitted: “I usually shoot my friends, because strangers make me nervous.”[2] He arranged his subjects' naked limbs in his hide-and-seek photographs in a style which made him a minor celebrity among promising young photographers.

In spite of the nude and taboo nature in his works, Hang did not consider his work inappropriate: “I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.”[11] This can account for his reticence to limiting his work to settings indoors. He said there were no preferred places for him to work, as he believed anywhere was beautiful and worthy to be shot, from sparse studios to parks and forests, and even in atop buildings. Hang’s photo has a very distinct personal characteristics, featuring nude group and solo portraits of men and women often contorted into highly performative positions.[2] For example, we will see hands reaching down milky thighs, a limp penis flop onto a watermelon and a series of backsides imitating a mountain range.

By freely sharing his works through various websites and his Facebook, Instagram and Flickr accounts, Hang accrued thousands of devoted young fans. Questioning the purpose of his work, he once stated that his creation a way to seek fun for both photographer and the photographed. However, once he had reached fame on an international level, he began to think deeply about his works. The British Journal of Photography quoted him as once saying: "I don't want others having the impression that Chinese people are robots... Or they do have sexual genitals but always keep them as some secret treasures. I want to say that our cocks and pussies are not embarrassing at all." Ren also focused on the marginal population with gender identity disorders within Chinese society by 'indeterminating' sex and gender in some of his works: group of nude bodies stacked together, men wearing silk stockings and wearing lipstick. He denied having a preference in models: “Gender… only matters to me when I’m having sex.” The international quarterly journal specializing in photography called Aperture used his photo as the cover of the theme Queer. Commentators also see his work, the naked body and the starched penis, as evolving sexual mores and the struggle for creative and sexual freedom in a conservative, tightly controlled society. But Hang also announced “I don't try to get a message across, I don't give my works names, I don't date them. I don’t want to instill them with any vocabulary. I don't like to explain my photos or work as a whole'.[6]

Insiders indicate Hang’s work as softcore pornography for nudity, and sex as a theme was most pervasive in his work, but Hang also worked with other themes. The most famous one was called “My Mum”. Although still under a fetishistic atmosphere, posing with usual props in Ren's works like animals and plants, Ren's mother posed as a model not nude, but in a light-hearted way to represent her daily life. He also took photos for big brands and famous magazines like Boys Don't Cry, L'OFFICIEL, GQ Style and Vice.

Poetry

Hang has published one collection of poetry by Neurasthenia, Taiwan, which contained his poems from 2007 to 2013 named Poem Collection of Renhang. This collection of poetry mainly about his enthusing emotions on describing the ideal love and life with lovers as well as the fear and loneliness when losing loves. These emotional erotic poetry usually comprised a handful of short lines, their tone ranging from humorous to sensual to dark. Here is an extract from a 2016 poem called Love:

My kisses can be finely linked into a line, just like/

A snake slithers across every rugged reef rock on/

Your trembling body, afterwards you turn/

Into a snake, I turn into a rock, still afterwards we/

All turn into snakes, intertwined together, we/

All turn into rocks, hitting each other.

He also wrote a collection of prose poems named My Depression recording his inner struggles against depression, included frequent hallucinations and hearing voices. In one poem, he wrote:

Life is really one/

Precious gift/

But sometimes I feel that/

It has been given to the wrong person.

Style and controversies

Though Ren always announced that his photography had no styles and no meanings. Audience still can see the shadow of Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Robert Mapplethorpe from these archetypal, stylistic nudes harken on his photographs. However, the intense conflicts on tonal and the unusual posture the model performed on his shooting provided a sense of symbolism. 

Hang used a point-and-shoot camera to make film-loaded pictures was not a secret among photographers. He would ask the naked model stack, splay, or sprawl as he said directly and shoot in quick succession. On his oeuvre, sex organs, breasts and butt holes were not covered up, but featured, or accentuated with props and close-ups. Colors were showy and contrast, which made it a visual impact to the audience. This, along with the fact all bodies were slim, lithe and relatively hairless, made the genital impact much more impressive. Because he was not familiar in using flashlights, some of his oeuvre would be overexposed. However, through his photograph communicated a uniquely raw, stark aesthetic that batters taboos and celebrates sexuality. Someone concluded it was this contemporary form of poeticism in a visual context that expressed themes of identity, the body, love, loss and death were conveyed by the artist.[6]

Nudity is not a theme in the artifacts which can be widely accepted by the Chinese old generation.Ren's works are mistreated by the public as pornography sometimes. Although some articles wrote that Ren used his photographs to cultural jamming traditional misunderstood which treated the nudity as a shame, Ren didn't believe he was challenging the stereotype and leading a revolution.For Ren, nudity and sexuality are natural themes which he shot in his works."Nudes are there since always. We were born nude. So talking about revolution, I don't think there's anything to revolutionize. Unless people are born with clothes on, and I want to take their clothes off, then I think this is a revolution. If it was already like that, then it's not a revolution. I just photographed things on their more natural conditions."Ren said he was not trying to liberate nudity and sexuality since he believed that Chinese young generation was open-minded and less affected by the old-fashioned cultures. When Hang talked about the question whether the topic of sexuality was still a taboo in China, Ren said:"I don't think it's related to our times, these are individual cases. Like how to say it, I think it depends on different people, it doesn't really relate to other things. I was not in the whole parents told you that you can only have sex if you get married era. The time after I grow up was already over that period, it was already different like everyone was already more relaxed."

Publications

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2010

2011

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Group exhibitions

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Awards

References

  1. ↑ "Ren Hang - Artists - Klein Sun Gallery". kleinsungallery.com. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Controversial and renowned Chinese photographer Ren Hang dies aged 29". Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  3. ↑ Quin, Amy. "Ren Hang, Provocative Chinese Photographer, Dies at 29". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
  4. ↑ https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/03/arts/ren-hang-dead-photographer-china.html?_r=0
  5. ↑ "Controversial and renowned Chinese photographer Ren Hang dies aged 29 – British Journal of Photography". bjp-online.com. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  6. 1 2 3 "Ren Hang at Foam: The Must-See NSFW Exhibition - The Public House of Art". publichouseofart.com. Retrieved 2017-03-02.
  7. ↑ "The banned Chinese photographer on show in Paris | Photography | Agenda | Phaidon". phaidon.com. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  8. ↑ "WHAT WE DO IS SECRET: AN INTERVIEW WITH CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE CHINESE PHOTOGRAPHER REN HANG".
  9. ↑ Amuse Team (2017-03-08). "Ai Weiwei on Ren Hang". Vice.com. Retrieved 2017-05-09.
  10. ↑ "Chinese Photographer Ren Hang Dead at 29 | BLOUIN ARTINFO". blouinartinfo.com. Retrieved 2017-02-25.
  11. ↑ "Tribute to Ren Hang". taschen.com. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 2017-05-19.
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