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A photography and film exhibition exploring the social life and ethnicities of a pedestrian bridge in Guangzhou, China
Slought is pleased to announce "Little North Road 小北路," a photography and film exhibition by Daniel Traub exploring the social life and economies of a pedestrian bridge in Guangzhou that functions as a symbolic gateway into China from Africa and the Global South. The exhibition will be on display in Philadelphia from September 17, 2015 to November 27, 2015.
The project takes its name from a district known as Xiaobeilu (Little North Road in English) in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, which is also known as "Little Africa" because of its sizable African population. Guangzhou is located in the Pearl River Delta, which has come to be known as "the workshop of the world," accounting for one third of the goods China exports. Tens of thousands of people from the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, as well as migrants from other parts of China, have migrated to Guangzhou to trade in the goods produced there, and in search of other opportunities. The exhibition at Slought explores a pedestrian bridge in Guangzhou that was built in the early 1990's with functionality in mind, and links different parts of Xiaobeilu.
In 2009, Brooklyn-based photographer Daniel Traub approached two Chinese photographers Wu Yong Fu and Zeng Xian Fang who were making a living by providing souvenir portraits of passers-by on the bridge. Traub began collecting these photographs as a way to create a visual record of the African presence in Guangzhou and other populations that have a precarious foothold in China. Additionally, photographs by Traub document the urban landscape around the bridge and provide a context for the collected portrait photographs. Nearly seven years later, this collaborative effort has now produced an archive that numbers over twenty thousand images, and is a small part of the photographic record of China's rise.
The archive consists of Wu and Zeng's portraits, as well as additional landscape photographs taken by Traub, as an outsider. The majority of the photographs are akin to self-portraits. While Wu and Zeng took them, they are more facilitators of their customer's self-presentations rather than their author. Wu and Zeng use a small digital camera; afterwards, the memory card from the camera is inserted by Wu's wife into a battery-powered printer and a copy is made for the customer, typically for a small fee (typically 10 RMB or $1.50 per sheet).
Images that may at first appear prosaic and repetitive in fact participate in a broader visual conversation consisting of a coded language of clothing, facial expressions and gestures. They reference other images such as those of the renowned Malian photographers Sedou Keita and Malik Sadibe, and other African traditions of representation, as well as conventions of vernacular Chinese portrait photography.
As China's power has grown, it has become a new center of gravity pulling people from remote lands. Some of these people are merely passing through China, conducting business, searching for opportunities. Others are staying longer, seeking permanent residence, marrying Chinese citizens and perhaps, slowly, influencing the character of China.
The pedestrian bridge in Guangzhou is thus a unique space that functions on multiple levels, and, interestingly, embodies Africa's deepening involvement in China. It is a metaphorical gateway for populations entering into the country from the global South, a sort of Little North Road into China. It is also a platform upon which Chinese migrant workers interact and conduct business with these newcomers, fostering a vibrant informal and ad hoc economy. As the sun sets, Chinese migrants from all over the country spread out plastic sheets and cover them with all manner of goods for sale–toys, underwear, cellphone cases, animal skins, ginseng–transforming the bridge into a night market.
The bridge also functions as a key public space or town square for the quarter, through which everyone in the area inevitably passes by several times a day. In addition to allowing for safe passage over the large arterial road that runs through the area, the bridge, with its openness and perspectives, also provides a respite from the frenetic activity of the surrounding area, where crumbling, old structures abut newer, glassy, high-rises. Because it is aloft, there is a sense of being lifted out, not only from the dense urban fabric of the city, but also, for a moment, from the cares and imperatives of everyday life. The elevated highway above and its curving on-ramps cast shadows under which people linger to shield themselves from the mid-day sun. Planter boxes filled with greenery and bright pink cascading flowers soften the otherwise harsh environment.
Here, people come to meet, linger and gaze out onto the city, losing themselves in thought. It is, both literally and figuratively, a heightened space that shifts one's perspective, invites one to pause, look out into the distance and, perhaps, at oneself. The bridge becomes a stage on which one can explore, reimagine or simply take stock of oneself. Photography is a mechanism for documenting this place.