#82 CAMERA Book Review: China Conversation @ the Open Eye Gallery

China Conversation Open Eye Gallery 2018. It's like a zine. It's a sort of little zine for the exhibition which was at the Open Eye Gallery in the summer which I came across in Liverpool. It was created by Sean Bonelli. We present fresh still and moving imagery from young photographers studying at four selected universities in China, Nanjing University of Arts, Dalian Medical University, and Zhejiang Fashion Institute, Ningbo, and Wuhan Institute of Design. I am so sorry if I got any of that wrong. Running through the work in a sense of inquiry into how we can approach the camera in different ways, the exhibition offers an overview of the concerns and interests of these new practitioners given a glimpse into the different ways of seeing from the commercial to the conceptual. One question that many of the young photographers seem to be responding to what exactly constitutes photography in the 21st century? Absolutely. The rise of smartphones and the ease of sharing images online has changed how we understand the nature of still and moving images. Brilliant. Absolutely spot on. I think it's an interesting place to come from is actually China. we see China as a sort of hub of technology as Japan with sharing and photography and digital technology and the forerunners of leading the way and giving us new devices and techniques and having photographed and being in Hong Kong and Japan and places like that it's very easy to take pictures so I think this is a really interesting concept and I deal with a lot of students and it's interesting trying to get them to associate what's going on in their lives and making it relevant to the stuff they see every day and just stuff like this you know it's new ways of looking at stuff it's really interesting and getting students to visualise their everyday surroundings using individual style and flash and smashing flash seems to be quite to the fault of them probably because flash is sitting there on top of these smartphones as well and it's really interesting you know it's a really interesting age and I'm pleased I'm around to witness this transition where digital's sort of taken a hold, not only in smartphones, but in new camera technology as well. Now, let's just glimpse through it. It's not a big thing. You know, just going back to the size of it, it's eight and a half by six, you know, and it's just about the zine size. Now, let's just come down a little bit on it. You've got that. Look at that, like a lotus. What is it with the hand? It's a really interesting concept. and just a lot of deep stuff a lot of interesting stuff i love this concept you don't know what the story is so there could be a sort of bigger story within the context of this but you know i think it's interesting showcasing it i think it's really as interesting um where you'll ask a sort of question of what happened before what's going on now and what happens later and i think we need to have sort of striking um symbols and motifs and stuff within the within there to sort of think wow you know maybe i'll look into this and that's striking i'll take that further and look into that so i think it's quite voyeuristic some of it as well and especially obviously the first stuff you've got some color quite sort of deep deep as well it's quite um there's some sexual connotations there but i think it's quite interesting you know so list of the works i can't even pronounce some of these names but if you want to do that stay on them and have a look um and the um china Conference is supported by Manchester School of Art and Art Research Department and MSARC fantastic well done i like it well done sean i think it's a nice a nice an interesting subject matter i think china is a really interesting place i think we should know more about i know um i think and it's be interesting you know what we can get out there as well to educate them in terms of what we're doing so i like this um well done to the open guy well done to sean china conversation thank you