shashasha

“404 Not Found” – Li Yang’s photo series about a ghost city somewhere in China’s desert is a portrait of his own hometown as well as a stunning document of China’s advancing development and the costs it incurs.
The city in Yang’s photos is called “404,” a generic code given to a city that has no official name, built in the 1950s for a nuclear technology research base. Once home to the country’s elite, the city now looks dead and abandoned in Yang’s photos; a monument to China’s rapidly changing society that spans one square kilometer.

“I am a third generation of 404, and every photograph in this series is related to my own experience and those of the people around me. The scenes include my kindergarten, my primary school which was the same school my parents went, the public bath which we used to go weekly and it was also an important social place for the local people, and the two poplar trees that I planted myself, etc. This was once our home, filled with life.” — from the artist’s statement