Art
Sunday, 04 July 2010 05:07
Written by JFK Miller

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A glorious new photobook takes us inside China’s homes

At 69 years old, Dutch photo artist Robert van der Hilst is more interested in looking to the future than the past. “In 50 years, I hope people will look at this book. I consider it a good document about China, to show people how Chinese live inside their homes,” he says.

He’s talking about Chinese Interiors, his new 300-page coffee-table photo book which he’s spent the last four years compiling. Van der Hilst has traveled the length and breadth of China to photograph ordinary Chinese people in their most natural habitat – their homes. The photos are “composed,” van der Hilst explains. “These people become my actors and I am the director of the theater. I stage each photograph.”

While the book contains some photos showing an affluent China, most of the images are of villagers living a very basic existence. Mainland author Yu Hua, van der Hilst’s friend, picks up on this point in his foreword to the book. “I think that perhaps some Chinese people will grumble in reaction,” he writes. “They will say that China has experienced 30 years of rapid economic growth. It is the world’s third largest economy, booming everywhere, but Robert van der Hilst is only interested in shooting the backward parts of China.”

Yu goes on to defend van der Hilst. It’s a spirited defense: “I understand that these sorts of critics consider themselves patriotic,” he writes. “I do not consider this to be genuine patriotism – it is a slippery spittle type of patriotism, or a nationalistic disease that reveals deep-rooted human vanity. Inside, our house lies in ruins, but we flaunt our showy garden.” He commends van der Hilst’s photographs for “genuinely present[ing] the Chinese living condition” and treating his subjects with respect and dignity.

Van der Hilst himself was overwhelmed with the hospitality of ordinary Chinese people. “It is remarkable,” he says. “In 99, perhaps even 100 percent of cases, people warmly invited me inside their homes, served me tea, offered me cigarettes.”
Van der Hilst’s next photobook will focus on China’s women.

 

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