Photographing hypermodern urban landscapes through the ghostly haze of LEDs and smog, Mårten Lange’s new work from China shows a country haunted as mu…
Made in 2018 and 2019 in the six largest cities of the country, the series depicts urban places that have expanded rapidly in recent years and that appear both futuristic and suspended outside of time. Following Lange’s long-time fascination with ideas of utopia and dystopia, this is his most extensive work to date
“The skyscrapers are vertical signatures that penetrate the evening sky all glass and reflective. Water pools on their surface creating an impermeable glare as one winces into the crow’s nest of their rapacious skyward capacity”
I feel a call to resist what I am observing in these images. I feel a tremor of uncomfortability in what Lange is showing us and yet I know he is not taking any position on the matter. He has found a way to read metrics and to report them back to us in a byte stream while still retaining some concerns that exceed the full governance of non-human observation. The question that remains is as to where Lange will go next-will his vision force him into the role of digital ghost or will he re-trench and rally against an increasingly interesting master of new observations in which images rely on metrics more than emotions? This is a defining achievement for Lange and for the medium of photography itself. This has my Highest Recommendation and is truly one of the most important books of the decade thus far, but you will need to remember I said this from a point in the future.
