Emily with a Fake Dior Vintage Handbag, Guangzhou, 2005
Zhang Hai'er
张海儿
Production date
2005
Media
digital C-type print
Measurements
100 x 67 cm
Notes
The cross-dressers in Zhang Hai’er’s photographs from the mid-1990s onwards perform femininity and seduction in large prints characterised by highly saturated colour and theatrical lighting. Their bodies emerge from moody chiaroscuro; pale gleaming skin, lustrous silk and satin underwear, and glittering costume jewellery create a sensuous tactile siren song of desire and longing. You imagine a disco beat echoing through the hotel rooms, perhaps a touch of Donna Summer and ‘Bad Girls’ — in fact ‘Bad Girls’ is the title Zhang gave to this earlier series. In Emily with a Fake Dior Vintage Handbag, Guangzhou 2005 (2005) Zhang’s subject sits on an armchair draped with old-fashioned flowered fabric. The photograph jangles with dissonance: the chintz is incongruous against the shiny hot pink satin lining and fake fur of her jacket, fire-engine red handbag and lips, and glossy stockings and bra. A frilly feminine suspender belt frames Emily’s erect penis. We are viewing a scenario staged for the benefit of the photographer’s gaze; Zhang Hai’er looks for photographic subjects that embody paradox: he has said that he finds the feminine costume of his cross-dressing subjects ‘much sexier than ordinary women’. The inclusion of the fake designer handbags underlines the social context – women and men working in the sex industry are as much a part of the new Chinese economy as the factory production lines from which the shan zhai (counterfeit) Dior and Louis Vuitton emerge.
Accession number
2014.118