Sun Yanchu, Even Us, Even Me, 2019

In the series “Lost Souls” that Sun Yanchu begun in 2013, the subject, or object, can be loosely described as landscape, but it feels like much more. The images full of strange details that reveal his eye for observation. It is not one thing above all others: not a single topic or object; nor a person or a place. Sun’s obsession belongs to a state of mind. What he observed most keenly were those minutiae within the changing environs, which might be construed as an attempt to provide evidence of existence, but as often as not simply delighted in the ambiguity they implied. As through the evolution of “shanshui” painting in China, in his work, nature serves as metaphor or vehicle for conveying a state of mind. This may be the photographer’s state of mind, but equally that of his generation, the society in which he exists, or the general aura of the times. 

On the basis of “Lost Souls”, the book “Even Us, Even Me” includes also a medley of “Obsessed” and Sun’s latest work of “Ficciones”, to make its strongest appeal through its underlying sense of confirming the existence of a world outside of ourselves. The quivering images draw us in. We feel the vibrations of elemental energy coursing through the panoramas, sweeping us along on its currents. We get lost in their motion, taken out of ourselves, while simultaneously recalling times when we have been out in the embrace of nature, bracing the wind and realizing how good, if hard at times, it is to be alive.