Artwork Page for Third Front—Train

Details / Information for Third Front—Train

Third Front—Train

2006

Chen Jiagang 陳家剛

(Chinese, b. 1962)
Culture
China, 21st century
Medium
inkjet print
Measurements
Framed: 177.8 x 218.4 cm (70 x 86 in.)
Credit Line
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2012.114
Edition
edition of 8
Copyright
Copyright
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print

Description

In the 1960s, Mao Zedong ordered construction of the Third Front: a massive build-up of military and industrial manufacturing in remote areas of southwest China. In the 1980s, when the Cold War ended and China shifted its focus from defense to economic development, those factories and towns were largely abandoned. Early in his career, architect Chen Jiagang designed and built an atomic plant on the Third Front. After he turned to photography in 2001, his first major series used the Third Front ghost towns as the settings for staged, theatrical scenes. Young women dressed in cheongsam (form-fitting dresses popular in China from the1920s to the 1940s) wander through mid-century industrial ruins, serving as spirits of an even more distant past.

Third Front—Train

2006

Chen Jiagang

(Chinese, b. 1962)
China, 21st century

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