Photo: ©Ren Hang, courtesy of Taschen.
On February 24, Chinese photographer and poet Ren Hang (1987-2017) killed himself in Beijing, jumping from one of the terrifyingly vertiginous buildings that appears in so many of his photographs. His sudden death shocked the world, as Hang had reached a new level of success with the simultaneous release of his first major monograph, Ren Hang (Taschen), along with exhibitions of work at Fotografiska, Stockholm, and Foam, Amsterdam.
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Dian Hanson, who wrote the introduction to the book, described Hang as, “an unlikely rebel. Shy, lanky, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing-based photographer [was] nonetheless at the forefront Chinese artists’ battle for creative freedom. Controversial in his homeland, but wildly popular in the rest of the world he says, ‘I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.’”
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Photo: ©Ren Hang, courtesy of Taschen.