Some Days 9
Wang Ningde
王宁德
Production date
2002
Object Detail
Media
gelatin silver print
Measurements
40 x 50 cm
Notes
Wang Ningde’s black and white silver gelatine prints, with their slight sepia tone, are instantly understood as connoting the past; his staging of posed figures in carefully designed settings may be read as cinematic slices of a larger narrative. Their deliberate artificiality hints at the absurd juxtapositions found in dreams, but they are also Wang’s comment on Chinese history: he shares a dark sense of humour with other Chinese writers, artists and film-makers who reflect on the psychic scars left by the Cultural Revolution. This was a time, he says, that caused ‘catastrophic change and distortion in people’s psychological states.’ Wang Ningde combines sardonic wit with sadness, a satirical view of past absurdities with tenderness. Some Days 9 (2002) depicts Wang’s version of Everyman, a sad figure always clothed in a baggy suit and cap from the Mao era, accompanied by the same small boy. They stand in long grass, stiffly posed with their backs to us, in a narrow space between train carriages. The photograph is shot from a low vantage point with dramatic perspective – the vanishing point at the horizon line is low behind the man’s body. The location is a railway siding; these trains are going nowhere, a mournful metaphor for the state of the country during the years of the Cultural Revolution. The man and boy may represent Wang Ningde and his father, but they also signify stultifying Confucian expectations of filial piety and strained familial relationships.
Accession number
2017.042