They No. 7, Three Sisters

Born in the northern province of Jilin and educated at The Art Institute of Jilin as a painter, Hai Bo is one of a group of contemporary Chinese photographers living and working in Beijing and exploring themes of historical, cultural and social change. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Song Dong and Zhang Huan, Hai Bo is now strictly a photographer, unusual as many artists work in other media such as painting and performance art in addition to photography.

Hai Bo's series "They" from the 1990s and 2000s consists of eleven paired photographs in which he rephotographed snapshots of family and friends taken during the Cultural Revolution and then reassembled the same people in identical poses for a new photograph. The two pictures side by side show the physical trace of time, the loss of "revolutionary idealism," and in some instances, the absence of former friends and relatives.

In this work, They No. 7, Three Sisters, Hai Bo has paired a formal black and white portrait of three young women taken in the 1970s with a contemporary version, in which one of the women is missing. The juxtaposition of the two portraits forces one to contemplate the changes that have taken place in people and society, and the more general themes of time, memory, and mortality.