Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Shanghai, China, 15–16 October 2004
Shi Guorui Chinese
Not on view
This eerie image of contemporary Shanghai was created using a camera obscura, an ancient technology for projecting images that Shi has adopted for his artistic practice. To create a print with this method, light is projected through a small hole onto a sheet of photographic paper for hours while the image is exposed. Because the exposure takes such a long time, the frenetic movement of people and vehicles that animates the city does not register in the resulting print. Instead, we are presented with one of the world’s largest and most dynamic cities rendered as a silent vista—a new landscape for the twenty-first century.
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