Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993

Text source: Three Shadow Gallery website

Location: Three Shadows Photography Art Centre
No. 155A Caochangdi, Beijing, China
Opening: January 2nd, 2009 3pm
Exhibition Dates: January 2nd to April 18th, 2009


This January, the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre will open ‘Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993,’ an exhibition of the artist’s unpublished photographs from more than twenty years ago.


During the decade he spent in the United States, Ai Weiwei took over 10,000 photographs, capturing the history, culture, and atmosphere of New York in the 1980s. The two hundred pieces in the exhibition have been carefully selected from this collection. There are photographs of East Village poetry readings, riots in Tompkins Square Park, drag queens from Wigstock, and visits by well-known artists and writers from China. The photographs not only document the changes of an era, but also reveal the world as seen through Ai Weiwei’s eyes, tracing the beginnings of his conceptual art practice.


A camera is never far from Ai Weiwei’s hands, and he has used photography to create some of his most iconic artworks. Ai Weiwei’s early New York photographs are a window into the development of his unique perspective on art and society.




Ai Weiwei on the New York photographs:


These photos were taken between 1983 and 1994 during the decade I spent living in New York before returning to Beijing. At that time, I didn’t really have anything to do. I was just hanging out, whiling away my time everyday by taking pictures of the people I met, places I went, my friends, my neighborhood, the street and the city.


In a flash twenty years have past, and the New York I knew no longer exists. The appearance of the East Village has totally changed, and many of the people in my photographs are no longer in this world. I took these photos casually, and most of my subjects probably don't even realize that they are in them. Today, looking back on the past, I can see that these photographs are not true anymore. After all, any reality is just a fact of change – an unconfirmed moment in the slow march of time. The present always surpasses the past, and the future will not care about today.


What drives me to organize and publish these photographs is not nostalgia, for I believe that past occurrences do not matter much. We are not destined to meet those whom we’ve met, and humans are by nature lonely. Rather, the photos themselves are concrete objects that form a kind of orderly arrangement despite their free-floating nature as disassociated images on photo paper. The specific people and things involved, including my own past, are not important anymore.


Life in the past fifty years has been much like a falling leaf with no goal or direction. In the end, however, the leaf will land in some corner. The images’ appearance and order are much like this. They are disorganized, but paths of thought appear that seem most clear when the photos are all mixed up.


Today, I still always have a camera in my hand, accustomed as I am to the click of the shutter. What I should explain though, is that I am not interested in photography, and don’t really care about the subjects of my photos. In the end, they are part of a different reality than that of my own existence. Every time I look at these photographs, I always discover that there is more strangeness in them than familiarity.


Archiving and preserving this collection is central to Three Shadows’ mission of presenting the history of Chinese photography. Long before Three Shadows opened, founders RongRong and inri began collaborating with Ai Weiwei on the exhibition and publication of these photographs. Three Shadows has organized and digitized the entire archive of Ai Weiwei’s early photographs.


‘Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs 1983-1993’ will be on view through April 2009.

Exhibition views....

Very interesting!