My Parents
Song Yongping
宋永平
Production date
1997-2001
Object Detail
Media
gelatin silver prints
Measurements
8 pieces, each 112 x 74 cm
Notes
In the 1990s Song Yongping was caring for his ailing, elderly parents in Taiyuan. He began to make a series of photographs, My Parents (1997-2001), described by curator and critic Karen Smith as ‘…a testimony to family bonds, and a sad glimpse into the lives of the masses caught up in the tidal wave of change in China today.’ The series begins with a formal, unsmiling portrait of his parents in their youth; they are posed in the same frontal manner, in their cramped apartment living room, in photographs that unflinchingly document the processes of disease, pain, loss, grief and death. The indignities of aging are faced head-on, and the artist includes himself in some photographs, even to the point of appearing in his underwear with the same medical apparatus needed by his ailing father. The series is a memorial, a documentation of filial duty, and a lament. Song Yongping says that it took more than a decade to recover from the trauma of his parents’ long illness and their loss.
Accession number
2015.098