For 10 years, Chinese photographer Lou Yang has been taking pictures of girls. Unlike the proper, sickly-sweet and overly-feminine girls that Chinese mainstream media entrusts the world to see, Yang's girls cross the line of tradition and expectations while walking the line between fragility and strength.
Raw, intimate and delicate, Yang's photographs depict the alternative and contemporary lifestyles of those who increasingly escape China's traditions and gender norms. Her subjects stand defiantly and carefree in crowded city streets, some pose boldly and confidently while showing off their physical imperfections, and others are with their partners, cuddling naked and in love.
Calling her decade-long series simply "Girls", Yang has brought her retrospective to Bangkok's RDX Offsite and Woof Pack galleries with the help of producers Jean Alexandre Luciani, Anette Fausboll and Julien Favre, as well as co-curators Chomwan Weraworawit, Darkle and Francois Langella.
Exhibiting almost 50 bold and cinematic pictures between the two galleries, Yang presents to Thais a new and growing generation of alternative Chinese women that we rarely ever get to see.
Yang, whom Ai Weiwei regarded as one of the "rising stars of Chinese photography" was recently included on BBC's 100 Women list as one of the most influential women in the world. The Shenyang-born photographer started out her series organically, hoping to record her loneliness and confusion as a teenage girl while she was studying graphic design at her hometown's Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts.
"The start of the 'Girls' series was my self-salvation," Yang said in Mandarin through a translator. "To rescue myself from my own sensitive, pressured and desperate teen years. It was the only way to express myself, to release my true passion for life and the world when I was a teenage girl."
Starting off by taking portraits of her like-minded friends, Yang gradually started shooting friends of friends, then strangers online.
"What I see in them are independence, freedom and their bravery to chase their dreams. To break the boundaries and traditions [of] Chinese society, culture and family. That's what I appreciate a lot, and I like to share these qualities with the rest of the world."
Shooting portraits of girls whom she finds deep connections with, each and every photograph tells an individual story of a person's hopes and dreams.
"I was born in the 80s myself, and the girls I shot at the beginning were born in the 80s too," she said. "As my series went on, I started to take pictures of girls born in the 90s and even 95 and younger. What I see is that girls in China, over the past decade, are more free, more independent, more brave, and they dare to pursue what they really want. Not just in China, but all over the world."
One set of photographs that stands out is a series of delicate portraits of Yang's friend Wang Yanyun. Starting with her looking unflinching into the camera while having her head shaved by a man who was her ex-boyfriend, later on she stands in a corner, alone, naked and pregnant. Soon after, she is playing in the bathtub with her young daughter as a single mother.
"People will always be my primary concern," she said. "I care about every individual's life story instead of the general big issues of the whole society. Being able to record so many girls, so many lives, so many wonderful moments means a lot to me. In this past decade, this whole body of work is nothing special. I'm just very honoured and I appreciate to be able to meet all these women, to be able to be very honest and sincere."
"The starting point of 'Girls' was due to my teenage problems," she continued. "However, now that I'm in my 30s, I no longer have those problems anymore. I think I will perhaps continue 'Girls', but I'll do things that fit my current life changes, because only when you feel it are you're able to present things in their most authentic form."
