About Muge photography, by Louise Clements

© Muge

Following photos by Muge, text by Louise Clements. ¹

their melancholy
is also my melancholy.
my melancholy is also theirs

I first became aware of Muge on Flickr.com when I was searching for artists to visit in 2008 during a research trip to Chongqing China, with colleagues from QUAD. I wanted to find someone that would be under the radar of the main institutions that were facilitating our visit. I wanted to meet someone real, on the ground and working on their own terms, outside of the commercial art and international biennale circuits – someone of the underground so to speak. ‘To be a great artist you must not be afraid to be hungry’ Muge from Chengdu and his friends from all over Schezuan province are just this, they have committed to great hardship, taken the risk to believe in themselves enough to become photographers in a place where opportunities are scarce, competition is high, materialism is fashionable and individualism is a treacherous endeavor.

© Muge

Fortunately as a consequence of our encounter on flickr and then in Chongqing I was able to invite Muge to the UK to participate in Format International Photography Festival – Photocinema, in the title exhibition with his work Silence and in person with fellow photographer from Chongqing, Zhang Xiao. I was fascinated how they would view the UK, during their first trip outside of China, and indeed they applied a similar principle and unique viewpoint to representing the places they encountered. For Muge his photographs often toy with the cinematic/filmic in ways that allow him to expand into imagined sequence the tension of which the before and the after offer a temporal dimension in the mind of the viewer, a place where the narrative of the onlooker is vitalized. Parallels can be drawn between Muge in relation to the influence of film Director Jia Zhangke and photographers Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Martin Parr and August Sander. Most clearly perhaps in the kinds of subjects he focuses on that mirrors Sanders series People of the 20th Century. In this Sander aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic. The series is divided into seven sections: Farmers, Skilled Tradesman, Women, Classes and Professions, Artists, City, and The Last People (homeless people, veterans and so on). By 1945 Sander’s archive included over 40,000 images. Muge is part way there already.

© Muge

Muge’s recent works titled Silence and Go Home are perhaps the most autobiographical series. Muge has a unique point of view, different from the hundreds of western photographers who have tried to represent the region. He drifts through the city and country side mapping people and place, he can relate directly to the dislocated people of the Three Gorges region along the banks of the Yangtze River, because it is where he has lived all his life. Chinese people respond differently to a westerner with a camera, Muge can pass unnoticed or at least his presence does not cause a local reaction. He is able to look people in the eye on literally level terms, in so many ways he is part of the people he represents.

© Muge

The notion of home throughout Muge’s work takes the idea of home as something that is the starting point of life it is a refuge, it is the last place that would shut you out, it is the romanticized sanctuary of belonging.

…the desire to return home becomes much stronger, just like a dream enchanting the mind every night. Only by returning home can that lukewarm sense of loss be eliminated.²

© Muge

1. Louise Clements is a curator, writer, performer and artist. Currently Senior Curator of QUAD also Co-founder and Curator of Format International Photography Festival Biennale, Derby UK. [↩]
2. See Confucius institute online. [↩]

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