Shanghai Dreamers

Maybe the fact that Shanghai often thought of itself as the 'Paris of the East' convinced John Galliano to up all the paraphernalia associated with a runway show and land Christian Dior's Resort collection there this year. Then the boat for Shanghai was pushed out even further with the debut of David Lynch's Lady Blue Shanghai and the global ad campaigns where Marion Cotillard - in a black leather suit and toting her Lady Dior - passionately pulls away from her lover against the backdrop of the Bund.

This series by the photographer Quentin Shih thus presents itself as a continuation of the Dior + Shanghai theme. It follows on from his previous artistic collaboration with the fashion house back in 2008 which resulted in the haunting series The Stranger in the Glass Box. Quentin's work always has its recognisable aesthetic attributes which mark him out as a superior image-maker in China today. Perhaps the greatest value in his vision is the lack of pandering to Western notions of what China ought to look like. There is no disparagement of outside influences to nostalgically lament a disappearing way of life, but neither is any part of contemporary China embraced wholesale. Underlying it all is his pertinent recognition that the fractured way in which Chinese people view their current cultural condition is inherited and irrefutable. These replicated figures in their plastic clothes come therefore, to reflect as much about the historical fate of these particular dreamers standing vulnerably in the vast and exposed spaces/stages as it does about the beauty of couture.

http://www.quentinshih.com/