Ma Naxia, 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
Zhang Hai’er has lived and worked between Paris and Guangzhou for many years and his work is inflected by traditions of French photography. In 2004, however, Zhang changed from mostly black and white 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. The city of Dongguan became especially notorious as a centre of China’s sex trade; together with forays into this subculture in Beijing and his hometown of Guangzhou, Dongguan became a focus for Zhang Hai’er as he entered the shadow world of male and female sex workers, leaving messages on online forums to seek new muses. Zhang says, ‘Should people think that the person who took these photographs has a kind of wicked taste? They guessed correctly.’
Accession number
2014.123