Some Days 72
Wang Ningde
王宁德
Production date
2009
Object Detail
Media
gelatin silver print
Measurements
50 x 40 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. As Wang continued to mine a seam of memory, locations and props became less important, backdrops became minimal and photographs are clearly shot in the studio. Some Days 72 (2009) shows a one-child family grouping: mother and child are seated on a rough bench, the father figure standing beside them, stiffly, like a soldier. They are together yet utterly separate, each lost in their own solitariness.
Accession number
2017.048