moodscanner: 05/19/12

When I was watching TV as a kid, I always enjoyed the old asian disaster movies from the 60s, 70s or early 80s. Actually I never watched one of these movies in full length, but I remember several scenes on land, mostly on the sea or inside a ship. Crewmen fighting Godzilla, or other monster creatures, coming from deep water or outer space, attacking them.
Sometimes, they were roaring, or they just acted without any sound (At least I believe to remember some of them not being loud, but surrounded by the noise of destruction caused by them. Looking back, I think all these mute creatures, the bursting, cracking and sinking ships, the sound of the waves, the screaming people and the often used slow motion in these sequences were creating the special atmosphere and trashy, but unique mood in these films).

Of course, CGI effects weren't used during that period. At least until the early 80s. But that's exactly one of the reasons why these old disaster and fantasy movies look so authentic and real in a way, especially the ones from asia (another favourite example of mine is "The Neverending Story" (1984), directed by Wolfgang Petersen). In general, I'm a big fan of any pre-CGI effects, used in films like "2001-A Space Odyssey" (1968) by Stanley Kubrick, or well done combinations like Duncan Jones' "Moon" (2009) or Christopher Nolan's Batman Reboot Trilogy and "Inception" (2010).

Now, I found these works of Chinese photographer and artist Jiang Pengyi (born in Yuanjiang, Hunan Province in 1977, he currently lives in Beijing, China).

I can see destruction, devastation and loneliness in the images, combined with a hopeless, desperate mood, that fascinates me.

Nevertheless, I remember the endless streets and amounts of cars moving thru cities like Shanghai, Mexico City, Los Angeles or Cairo, tons over tons of metal and steel, transporting billions of people every day, every hour, every second. Huge vivid urban spaces, and on the other hand, there are memories of pictures of abandoned, destructed places by war or ecological, geological events. Movement and standstill, Life and death.
There seems to be a war between civilization and nature, that results in casualties on both sides. On Pengyi's images, the remaining elements of cities that "invaded" nature's space, not only seem to have lost that battle, they look "lost in nature" in every possible way. But it doesn't change the fact that nature and artificial (human) constructions aren't separable anymore.
There's also a strange, slightly utopian mood in the artist's images, that stunned me.
If I try to imagine the scenarios as real sized cities and places, I can see the contrary of a war between nature and man. It could be a symbiosis of artificial elements and given natural environment. Built, grown and living at the same time in the same space.

Pengyi himself commented his work as "photographs of miniatures which communicate recurrent themes like the excessive urbanization, redevelopment and demolition in the Beijing City" on www.blindspotgallery.com.