Dream – About Bai Guanghua’s photography

by Hong Lei 

About in 1995, Bai Guanghua started his photography. He found his artistic experience in his early art study couldn’t match his need to express his vision and curiosity of the world perfectly, only photography is the right medium to do so. 

Dream, is the conscious and unconscious theme for Bai Guanghua. Early in year 2000, his fashion photographic work that won the top ten Chinese Fashion Photography has had the temptation for express his dream. His work, although was commercial fashion photography at that time, has touched the ambiguous combination of dream and reality.

Perhaps living in the South Yangzi River cultivated wet and messy dreamy images in Bai Guanghua’s mind. The rich nostalgic memory to his lost time is the juxtaposition to the poor spiritual reality. He uses his dream to criticize the reality. Just like Bai Guanghua’s Huang Pu River is no longer the fast developing site, but the fantasy of his own. 

Same applied to the Suzhou Garden series. I probably prefer this series more, for it is not aim to the big beautiful scenery but the little details of the small parts on the roots, in which recall his childhood memories and feelings. Memory in attention, self-talking in expression, indulged with deep level of anxious, Bai Guanghua’s photos are like nightmares, although they appear to be peaceful and delicate.