HAMMER, Stefan - Mao's Paradise

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4KUldP804I

"With this softcover edition of 'Mao's Paradise', Stefan HAMMER concludes his first book project on China.
The 'hidden' text in the flap expressly does not contain the description of the book, but rather the short story 'A Beautiful Occurrence' (written by Lu Xun *) in which the Chinese author (*1881 in Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, Empire China, †1936 in Shanghai) about the yearning for the beautiful, which just like a dream just can not be grasped.
This story opens the gaze of the viewer for the book, a wonderful introduction!

For the issue of the series, which has been shortlisted at the Fotobookfestival Kassel Dummy Award 2016, the dummy was expanded and re-edited.
The book, designed by Richard REISEN, has now a yellow book cut; along with the altered and much more elaborate designed and improved cover, the book is further 'matured' and ready to become a secret tip.
The edition is limited to 800 copies." (© Richard G. SPORLEDER)

* Lu Xun was a Chinese writer and intellectual of the Beida (Peking University) movement of May Fourth, who participated with other intellectuals in the Baihua Movement, a reform movement for literary genre and style. "(Source: wikipedia) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun)

Book reviews:

Stefan HAMMER has collected photographic cuts of urban life on his trips to China, mainly in the cities of Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, Tianjin and Hong Kong. He takes his pictures in districts that are in danger of being pull down, and in the ultra-modern, very capitalist quarters of booming megacities.
Stefan HAMMER's pictures resist any simplistic ideology. They are rather irritating questions that muddle our stereotypes vehemently and invite the viewer to read every detail in the photographs accurately.

The image of man runs like a thread through the sequence of the series. The type of display is thereby permanently varies. Icons of old and new heroes, reproductions of radiant family pictures, excerpts from press photos, mug shots, deformed faces on billboards and vital moments of everyday life combine to create a complex puzzle. This symbolizes in a very expressive form the intensive search for identity in a perfectly redefining society. The community appears as a fake and completely Simulated becomes reality.
He is aware that any photographic work is a very subjective construction of reality. So he develops out the image of Chinese cities from fragmentary detail views and not representative overviews. The imagination of the viewer is required to be able to put themselves in the lifestyle of the Chinese megacities.

With its clever visual play between order and chaos, colorfulness and gloom, clarity and mystery, Stefan HAMMER creates a mix of emotions. In a moment we think we have understood something of the contemporary China to abandon this idea again in the next moment. The great quality of this work is to destroy evidence without providing the mystery behind it." (Wolfgang ZURBORN is a lecturer in photography and co-organiser of Galerie Lichtblick in Cologne)

"I am inspired. A fascinating collection of images. Truly great.
It is like a production-ready movie script of unusual perspectives.
This volume has a veritably dialectical dramaturgy. Close-up, focused, distant, dissolved in time, mysterious.
The images spark interest and make one look more closely.
The dramaturgy is finely ordered, with a very artistic and evocative arrangement.
Mirror, optical illusion, outline, superimposition, true or false. Alienation, advertising, glamour, decay.
Traces of effort, of light-heartedness, of the absurdity of existence.
Colour and form, irritating in outline, become almost surreal in combination with other photographs, another outline. Never anything less than surprising, the photographs offer plenty of space for associations. This pleases me."
(Joe KNIPP, on 'Mao’s paradise')