Holly Roussell, Editor – Mo Yi: Selected Photographs 1988-2003

Review by Gerhard Clausing •

Mo Yi is an interesting Chinese photographer of Tibetan origin. He has had only a few major exhibitions in the West; this photobook and the related exhibitions (UCCA Center for Contemporary Art and Arles Photography Festival) are a welcome change. His work encompasses several decades of experimenting with images of people in their street environments in China, and one is intrigued by the variety as well as by the developing intent of his work. At the same time, the images give us an excellent overview of a society that has substantially changed since the 1970s.

The book is divided into five sections, arranged somewhat chronologically, from early street photography, observations on busses, to later street work that also includes the photographer as part of the scenes, and culminating with a section that makes use of color (versus the early black-and-white work); many of the later images feature the artist in interesting ways as part of the street. We get an excellent sense of cultural life as shown in settings of everyday hustle and bustle, on a very visceral level.

Mo Yi’s images make use of wide-angle lenses, often at an extreme view of a 17mm lens. However, it is not the technical details that interest him, but rather the performance aspect of photographing, almost as an emotional process analogous to shooting a weapon. Is the photographer primarily an outsider, yet also wishes to be seen as part of what he is capturing? The essays in the book are of great help in this case, as they allow us to better understand the process and motivation of this work.

Philip Tinari in his preface calls Mo Yi’s photography “a vision of a finite external world as experienced by an artist on a visceral level and at a daily rhythm.” The editor, Holly Roussell, recounts valuable biographical data and exhibition histories, and calls her astute analysis “Symphonies of Dissonance.” Christoph Wiesner, in emphasizing the appearance of the photographer as part of his street images, also discusses the idea of intentional loss of control while shooting photographs on the street, which seems to be of major importance to this photographer.

The images, samples of which you can see below, are well printed and sequenced and put you right in the midst of things. Some of them give you a sense togetherness and cultural cohesion; others contain ambiguity or mystery. Mo Yi makes excellent use of motion and low angles, especially in the images of bicyclists. Adding warm and cool colors in his later work, he makes use of warmth as well as establishing distance.

All in all, this photobook is an excellent presentation of Mo Yi’s projects, an intelligent retrospective of the work of a noted street photographer who deserves further recognition.

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Gerhard Clausing, Editor of the PhotoBook Journal, is an author and artist from Southern California.

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Holly Roussell, Editor – Mo Yi: Selected Photographs 1988-2003

Photographer: Mo Yi (born in Shaanxi Province, China; lives in Zhejiang, China)

Texts: Philip Tinari, Holly Roussell, Christoph Wiesner

Language: English

Design: Dagnès Dahan Studio – Dagnès Dahan and Raphaëlle Picquet

Hardback with cover image; 192 pages, paginated, with 163 images; 11.4 x 8.9 inches (28.8 x 22.5 cm); printed and bound in Malaysia by Papercraft; ISBN 978-0-500-02739-4

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