When I first discovered the work of Rian Dundon, he was deep in the process of photographing the civil unrest in Portland following George Floyd’s murder. Beginning in May 2020, nightly protests engulfed the city for a period of several months. Dundon was there most evenings shooting photos. Occasionally, he ventured further afield to document
I don’t take a lot of photos. Certainly not everyday, and sometimes it feels like I’m actively avoiding doing so. Mainly I’m responding to the way things look in my immediate surroundings. It is absolutely visual, but it’s also about how connected I feel to something. There is always some level of intuition involved. But no, they rarely turn out how I expect, so I’ve learned not to have too many expectations when I’m pressing that button.
Rian Dundon is based in Portland, OR and specializes in documentary photography. He is the author of: Protest City (2023), Fan (2015), and Changsha (2012)
Over six years, photographer Rian Dundon photographed life in the city of Changsha in central China. But upon the publishing of the resulting book in 2012, the publisher folded, leaving the fate of the undistributed books unknown for most of the next deca
Over six years, photographer Rian Dundon photographed life in the city of Changsha in central China. But upon the publishing of the resulting book in 2012, the publisher folded, leaving the fate of the undistributed books unknown for most of the next decade.
“At first, when I didn’t speak the language, I would hang out in pool halls and practice counting balls in Chinese. I couldn’t hold a conversation but I knew how to play and I knew how to smoke cigarettes. Later my Mandarin came and I could go to dinner with people or hit the karaoke clubs. Mr. Tian was a whiskey wholesaler and one of our first friends. His brother owned The Red East — a popular nightclub and karaoke house in Jishou where I got my first taste of provincial nightlife.
the talented group of photographers that comprise this issue: James Whitlow Delano, Markel Redondo, Katharina Hesse, Ryan Pyle, Xiqi Yuang, Wayne Liu, Carolyn Drake, Rian Dundon, Tim Franco, Eric Guo, Christian Als and Holly Wilmeth, M. Scott Brauer
