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Sep 28 Sat 2013 18:20
Capturing fragments of life before they disappear

Gubei, which straddles the Minhang and Changning districts, is a popular residential area with Europeans, Japanese, Koreans and other expats.存倉 But amid this melting pot of people and culture, there’s another side to Gubei that few foreigners see.It’s that other side seduced the lens of French-born freelance photographer Robin Mas.Mas, 27, spent time over a two-year period photographing residents in a traditional old Gubei neighborhood destined for demolition. In its narrow alleyways and amid deteriorating buildings, he captured the faces of a lifestyle that will soon be lost to another urban renewal project.Mas called his two-year project “Adios, Green Village,” referring to the predominant color of the paint peeling off the old buildings there. In mid-September, he held a one-day exhibition of his work in the neighborhood.He initially studied in France intending to go into advertising work, then abandoned that plan and graduated instead from Coventry University in Britain in 2008 with a degree in cultural and media arts. From there, he went to Germany to start his career.“I was living in Berlin and starting off as a photographer in 2009,” he recalled. “Although the city is very arty and creative, I felt the scene was a bit too self-centered, people gazing at their own belly buttons a bit too much.”So he hit the road.Open-minded look“I was travelling in Asia and China and developed a crush on Shanghai because of its dynamism, its energy,” he said. “In Shanghai, I sought a more curious and open-minded look on life, society and the arts. And that’s what I found.”When Mas first came to Shanghai, he stayed at a friend’s house in a walled expat compound in Gubei. Wandering beyond its confines into traditional neighborhoods nearby, he was mesmerized by the look and feel of the streets and the people who lived there.“As a photographer, faced with this pool of faces and stories, and the uncertain nature of their tenure, I felt compelled to produce a memory of this peculiar human theater,” he told an interview with the online portal CreativeHunt.Viewing the world through a lens is a very specialized way of recording life, he said.“Photography is immediate. The photographer sees what he’ll get and gets what he sees. That allows me to select or ‘make’ memories. And the beauty of it is its subjectivity.“A photo is a lie. It pretends to show reality while actually hiding it,” he continued. “In my ‘Green Village’ series of staged documentary portraits, I am making the memory of a place with a very personal view. As I saw beauty in the place and the people there, I chose to show it in a very positive light, when really — most people would agree — it is a terribly dodgy place. Photog儲存aphy is a tool that helps us remember what we want to see and forget the rest.”Mas earns a living primarily from private commissions for portraits, corporate promotions and fashion work. “Adios, Green Village” was his first major personal, non-commercial undertaking in Shanghai.“Originally, the project was meant to be shot with a medium format film camera,” he said of his gear. “For reasons of convenience, I decided after the first day of shooting to use a DSLR instead. The images were then cropped to 4x5 ratio.”The neighborhood exhibition, held on September 15 in lanes along Hongzhong Road, comprised 27 photos, scattered throughout the “village.” That forced exhibition attendees to hunt for the photos through the places where they were taken.“So many locals came up to thank me,” Mas told Shanghai Daily. “That really made it worth the effort. It was a spontaneous, joyous sort of event.”He said of the project, “Taking the photos was quite a human experience. I think I got closer to these people and got a better understanding of their lives and what drives them.”Personal contactMaking personal contact, however, took some doing. Locals were initially suspicious of a foreign photographer walking around asking a lot of questions, he said. Older folks suggested he turn his lens to the Bund or some other usual iconic spot. Some people refused to be photographed.He said he overcame initial mistrust by carrying a smaller, less obvious camera and talking to people. He spent time with families, showing them photos he had already taken to try to explain his purpose. Eventually, his presence became less intimidating and he was welcomed by most locals.“I learned a lot about the life in the ‘village’ and the residents,” he told CreativeHunt.“The buildings belong to old Shanghai, mostly, and some will be relocated when the place is torn down. People who lived there seemed to have a very fatalist approach to life. Not in a bad way. They’re not too concerned about what’s next; they improvise. They’re also very down to heart.”He recalled a conversation with one woman he met. When asked how she felt about the imminent demise of her neighborhood, she responded simply, “You foreigners are too sentimental. For us, those buildings are like clothes. When they’re too old, you change them.”About half of the photos in the exhibition were taken away by local residents at the end of the event. When Mas tried to return later with prints to give to some of the people he had photographed, he found many had already left the area.Mas is already contemplating a new project with considerable excitement. He wants to turn his lens to the lifestyle of fu er dai, or the second generation of wealthy in China.self storage

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