Lee Lyna, Royal Court Hotel, Beijing, 2006
Zhang Hai'er
张海儿
Production date
2006
Object Detail
Media
digital C-type print
Measurements
100 x 67 cm
Notes
In 2004 Zhang Hai’er changed his photographic practice from mostly black and white silver gelatin prints to colour photography, and from mostly film to digital processes, and he began to photograph men in Guangzhou and Dongguan who dressed as women. Posed – sometimes provocatively, sometimes awkwardly – in tawdry hotel rooms, or in tiny spaces against draped backdrops of sheets or bedspreads, they gaze directly at the camera, or just beyond it. These photographs of men dressed as women in domestic settings do something more interesting and more complicated than merely objectify Zhang’s subjects. They meet our gaze in a way that challenges its implied voyeurism; they are at once vulnerable and confident of their sexual power and selfhood.
Accession number
2014.112