Two Rich Men on New Year's Eve, Beijing

1999

Liu Zheng

(Chinese, b. 1969)

Culture

China, late 20th century

Medium

gelatin silver print

Measurements

Paper: 45.7 x 45.7 cm (18 x 18 in.); Matted: 71.1 x 66 cm (28 x 26 in.)

Credit Line

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2012.107

Courtesy of the artist and Eli Klein Gallery © Liu Zheng

This artwork is known to be under copyright.

Location

Not on view

Description

Liu Zheng worked for a newspaper in 1991–97, creating images that were supposedly documentary but instead presented a fictional, idealized view of life in China. The burgeoning individual prosperity and increasing openness to the West, meanwhile, was contributing to the rise of the photographer-artist in China, whose work fulfilled personal expressive needs rather than governmental ends. In 1994, Liu took on this new role as he began The Chinese, a seven-year independent project chronicling Chinese society that may have been inspired by German photographer August Sander’s comprehensive catalogue of his country’s people. Like American portraitist Diane Arbus, Liu emphasized dispossessed and marginalized citizens, the type of subjects he had been forbidden to shoot as a photojournalist.