LOIS CONNER  '1984' :

 

“No one in sight on the empty mountain, but their voices are heard” - Wang Wei

 

American photographer Lois Conner began her artistic journey in China in 1984. With a Guggenheim Fellowship, she left her work at the United Nations in New York to explore the Chinese landscape of Guangxi province using her 7"x17” panoramic camera. The elongated format of her photographs are similar to classical scroll painting and cinematic form. Although Conner set out to photograph the Karst formations of Guilin, what is less known are her portraits.

 

“The people in my landscapes are just as important as the landscapes themselves ... Without them there is no context, scale, or connection to place. Often they are the reason that I am making the photograph.”

Conner’s “1984” exhibition is a selection of the photographer’s earliest pictures made in China, comprised mostly of vintage platinum palladium printed photographs made by the artist over thirty years ago. This is Lois Conner’s second solo exhibition at M97 and follows her large-scale retrospective exhibtion earlier this year “A Long View” at the Shanghai Center of Photography (SCoP).