shashasha

Through its photographs and its layered design, Sun Yanchu’s photobook “Even Us, Even Me” seeks to confirm the existence of a world outside of ourselves. The photographs take landscapes, both man-made and natural, in detail or from a distance, as their subject but there is much more in these pictures. Building on the idea of the Chinese “shanshui” painting tradition, the pictures use nature as a metaphor for their author’s (or his generation’s, or society’s) state of mind.

“We feel the vibrations of elemental energy coursing through the panoramas, sweeping us along on its currents. We get lost in their motion, taken out of ourselves, while simultaneously recalling times when we have been out in the embrace of nature, bracing the wind and realizing how good, if hard at times, it is to be alive.”