The Yellow River

The aesthetics and colour palette of Zhang Kechun’s The Yellow River, remind me of Xu’s Watering My Horse. Does China lend itself to this aesthetic, perhaps? The faded colours give a misty, almost unreal quality to the image which also offer a stillness that can’t be articulated easily. What interests me about these images is that there is a definite sense of distance in them. When viewing them, I feel as though I am removed from the scene; an outsider looking in. The colours seem bleak and faded, and the sparse landscapes give an odd sense of emptiness. I love the composition of the images- all focusing heavily on negative space, symmetry and balance, and very carefully considered framing.

(1) Kechun, Z 2016, The Yellow River, photographic series, viewed 11 May 2020, <http://zhangkechun.com/works/the-yellow-river/>