shashasha

'As an artist working with time-based media, Adou understands and is acutely aware of the transience and absurdity of time and our human condition. Yet he is not overly sarcastic or irreverent as one might tend to be given such a disposition. On the contrary, Adou assumes the empathetic position of the vulnerable, of the what Dian Arbus might call the "victim" of the photograph. In his first major body of photographs "Salamada" Adou focused on the wild and remote Yi people of faraway Liangshan, Sichuan. The Yi people became the primal manifestation of his camera lens and artistry, though Adou would say it has little to do with him, he is just the conduit. After numerous visits he once joked he could close his eyes and make pictures it was so full of life, spirit. The individuals he depicts and their existence are far more profound than his photographs and film could ever convey, he might say, but convey they do. It is partly this sensitivity of the artist towards existence and the human condition that gives Adou's photographs their particular gravity, their worldly weight of time and experience and in the end their resonance with the viewer whether the subject be himself or the Yi people of Samalada. The poignancy of these works lies in the poetic intuitive mind of the photographer that captures and aligns the elements perfectly combined in his camera to question and contemplate for the viewer without any overt statement or criticism in his artistic language. It is this very subtly and fragility in Adou's work that intrigues us and gives the photographs their power.' -- Steven Harris, 'Two Sides of the Same Page' inAdou & Samalada