© Xiaopeng Yuan 2019 courtesy Loose Joints.
In one of the images from Chinese artist Xiaopeng Yuan’s new photobook, Campaign Child, out now from Loose Joints, two children share the same pair of jeans, their toes meeting side-by-side on the grass. The absurdity of the image is compounded by the fact that the two pairs of legs are already wearing a pair of jeans on the opposite leg, creating a sense of multiplicity, mirroring, and strangeness. The image is a good place to start when it comes to describing the odd-yet-enticing imagery showcased in Campaign Child. There are children’s heads popping up out of tablecloths, and hands reaching into tall glasses, grasping at the base and rim. Elsewhere, an extraordinary blue bird sits atop a child’s arm decked out a similarly avian print, or a light metre is held up at a giraffe. Yuan’s photographs sit somewhere between ordinary and performative, playful and everyday at once.
According to the photographer, the inspiration for the images came from his experience of working on commercial photoshoots when he was just starting out as a photographer. He remembers being commissioned by Chinese kidswear brands to photograph white Western children against American backdrops in his native Shanghai. In Yuan’s photography, all is not what it seems—despite the glossy, pristine quality of his imagery, there is something strange lurking within and beyond the confines of the frame: a box of tissues sits waiting on a crumpled bed; liquid spills from a hospital bed; a child decked out in rainwear kneels on a table scattered with a cornucopia of random objects; the classic still life is deconstructed into a tumble of fruit and tin cans. Here, the strict order of photography—and mass media and advertising photography in particular—is upset, rendered uncanny and weird, ultimately bringing into question the absurdity of images under capitalism.
Campaign Child, by Xiaopeng Yuan is out now from Loose Joints.
Images: © Xiaopeng Yuan 2019 courtesy Loose Joints.