As
China expands, so do its cities. Within them, a definitive divide is forming at
the growing urban frontier. The shifting lines of urban rubble essentially mark
the physical border between old and new China.
Photographer
Alnis Stakle is fascinated by this divide. He traveled to the coastal cities of
Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangzhou to document the apocalyptic
landscapes where the new wastes and old ways of life are to be replaced by
gleaming towers and commerce. It’s an interstitial space that’s quite literally
being chewed up by China’s monster economy.
The
series is called Shangri-La — named after the mythical valley, a
mountain-rimmed promised land. His images ironically portray a rubble-
“I’ve
always been drawn to urban territories on the edge of natural and urban
environment, in a limbo between development and deterioration,” Stakle says.
“The verge is rich in sociopolitical and artistic messages, but I feel there is
something more to it — something that makes it a tangible
China
is ascendant, posing direct competition with the US economy for the first time
in modern history and moving toward a dominant position on the global stage.
Part of its plan for the next ten years involves a massive urban renewal
project to better connect and increase the capacity of its cities.
The
factories and construction work have already brought hundreds of millions of
people in from the surrounding countryside. Projections for the country’s urban
regions — which alone already out-populate the entire United States — reckon
that over a billion people will occupy them within the next twenty years.
Those
living in the cities fall under “hukou,” a de-facto class designation that
regulates access to services including education and health care. This is being
revamped along with the cities themselves, meaning the opportunities and
culture of urban areas is set to transform along with their demographics and
skylines.
Explaining
why he chose to approach this topic with his camera, Stakle says, “Every city
serves basic human needs — it is warm and safe, it provides a home and a sense
of community. Today, however, cities have turned into infinite agglomerations
wherein the social and architectural constructions also create disorder,
alienation and loneliness.”
Stakle
describes his approach as a meditative one. The areas he photographs are not
chosen or presented as precise representations of the urban renaissance.
Instead, they’re his way of making sense of a phenomenon that is essentially
too big to comprehend. Nevertheless, they are places that many outside of them
don’t regularly see.
In
addition to the slow pace of life that still survives there, the places Stakle
photographed are often construction sites that are strictly off-limits. Doing
his research during the day, he set out at night to shoot. This created an
eerie tone in the photos, but also made it easier to find his way around.
He
navigated closely guarded checkpoints through myriad passageways using holes
cut into fences—holes made by workers and locals not willing to take the
roundabout pathways that mark the sites’ “official” entrances. Using no maps
Stakle traversed the surreal rubble until he got the shots he wanted,
eventually finding his way to a train to take him back to his hotel.
“I
regard photography as something approaching as a ritual,” he says. “I choose to
focus on the state of transformed consciousness that is achieved when I find
myself all alone, at night, in a potentially dangerous place, where reality
becomes blurred and starts to resemble a theatrical production.”
The
photos show the apocalyptic wasteland that presages renewal and advancement.
They’re a document of the strange limbo that these places occupy before the
transformation is fully realized.
Within
the next 20 years the communities and cultures in these areas will evolve or
move on, and few, if any, will remember what once stood at the foundations of
the massive commercial and residential superstructures that will expand to a
size of ten Manhattans. Stakle’s pictures may be some of the only evidence it
ever existed at all.
“I
have lived in the USSR and experienced socialism, collectivization and censure
first-hand,” Stakle says. “Subsequently, I have witnessed the ambiguousness of
Western capitalism and democracy in the post-Soviet space. This dual experience
has left me with a peculiar aftertaste in the aftermath of my visit to China.
On the one hand, I recognize the conventionally condemning attitude of the West
with its emphasis on violation of human rights and environmental pollution in
China … At the same time, I was positively impressed by the sheer speed and
scale of China’s economic growth as well as by its absolute liveliness.”
(Alıntı)
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