His pictures were about the odds of youth against an absurd universe.
Three weeks ago, and two weeks before he died, I wrote a story about Chinese artistRen Hang, introducing him as a rising star. Our final interview was brief, conducted over email. Why photograph? I asked him. He told me, “because it fills the emptiness of my heart.”
When I heard he took his own life on February 24 I wept, first out of shock and then regret, as I realized he had suffered far more deeply than I knew. A queer, self-taught photographer famedfor his provocative, surrealimages of naked Chinese youth, Ren was well-known for his battles withcensors, but far fewer were aware of hislifelong fightagainst depression. In person he was pleasant andmild, friends told me, but he said very little about his ownart.
It is still wrenching to accept that it istoo late to tellRen Hang how much hiswork changed me: the first time I saw it in 2013 I was stunned. I had never seen an artistimagine bodies like mine — willowy, Asian, unassuming — as vessels of queerdesire, free to play,containing infinite iterations. Through Ren’s eyes, I saw new paths for myself.
What is intimacy? — Ren’s work posed. Every one of his photographs seemed to be an experiment into closeness, a search for a love devoid of narrative or hierarchy. He embraced his characters withmetaphors—fingers, flowers, phone cords—as if trying to find the combination to unlock a new secret insight about human connection. Much has been said aboutRen’s depiction of pleasure but he was equally reverent of pain: his pictures seemed less about fucking and more about survival, the limits of bodies, the odds of youth against an absurd universe.
In a decade of photography,Ren Hang almostnever strayed from his main subjects:youth, sex. But if his early work reads like a lustful,lo-fi mementoof aBeijingafternoon, Ren’s later workcould be darker, more dangerous. Many of the photographs he uploaded to his website in his final year, Ren appears to haveshot in pitch black by the sea, posing his models amongchurning water and sharp rocks. The risk might not be falling in love, but being swept into the waves.
During his life, Ren’s writings were often treated as discontinuous from his images. In his death they have been looked toas explanations. His poems conveyed a despair that youthand love contained the seedsof inevitable tragedy. One, written at age20 — the year he picked up a camera — reads like an overture:“Youth is so skinny / In a moment, a gentle breeze blows it away / When it returns / It brings a big fat coffin.” One of his last:“I buy a knife, we can share it / If you don’t love me, I’ll kill you / If I don’t love you, you’ll kill me.”
I recall what he told me about his heart’s emptiness and wonder if he sawphotography as a stay against that void. But asRoland Barthes wrote in Camera Lucida, this mediumcontainsa hidden sadness:it declares onlywhat has been,while reminding that everythingslips away. Ren Hang’s images are poignant to mebecause they are untenable: hisyoung, nakedheroes could notholdtheir posesforever. His utopia shimmered only between shutter blades;itcould not save his whole life.
How do we account forwhat is left? We have Ren Hang’s work; we no longer have Ren Hang. We have photography with its miraculous might, yet again we are reminded it cannot stop suffering, andis no match for death. We have our own heartsticking on, whispering that they, too, need to be filled.
And I have the memory of my favoriteRen Hang photo, the first I ever saw.A man and a woman are on a rooftop, nude. The sun is setting —or is it rising? — overa cityshrouded by fog. She faces away, yet leans back to meet his lips in a kiss. It reminds me ofa poem he wrote the same year:
In this second
I want to let my heart beat
Once more for the sake of it
Not for someone else
Not for myself
And not for anything
In this second
I feel
One actually can live
This freely
Somewhere out there are emerald fields, trees arcing like outstretched arms, wave-worn rockswith secrets only Ren Hang knows. Therehe created a world where, for heartbeats at a time, we could be free.
“Ren Hang – Naked/Nude” is on view until March 12, 2017 at Foam Photography Museum in Amsterdam.
This piece was also published at Invisible Photographer Asiaand translated into Chinese at Initium.Still / Loud is a new, independent online magazine about music, photography and culture in Hong Kong. Follow us on Facebook
