Kota Metropolitan

Sze Tsung Leong's images of Chinese development remind me of Jakarta. I lived there once, walking the streets with my camera as I tried and failed to do an Atget on the place.

Jakarta had its kampungs flattened in the name of modernisation and development, but just as in China the old hierarchies remained. I don't know what the term used for modernised cities in China is - but in Jakarta it was Kota Metropolitan (Metropolitan City).

So a little blast from the past before a little more Chinoiserie.

Sze Tsung Leong

Sze Tsung Leong's images of China's urban construction/destruction boom share a sentiment of Paul Graham's - that an environment denuded of public space and historical functionality. Like Graham's work, they also have a subtext of the gaps between rich and poor.

At the same time, though, Sze recognizes that there are other layers of history that don't change - that the "...appearance of the cities may be entirely different, but the inner workings hehind these changes still persist, the hierarchies of power, the relationship of the individual to the majority."

What is so interesting about China and the modern urban development that Sze's images show, is the way these hierarchies of power are being overlaid by a new image of China - that of the modern, developed country capable of being a world class economy/cultural venue/sporting competitor and so on. It's all a facade, as this interview in Guernica (via Conscientious/Exposure Compensation) explains, but with the Beijing Olympics coming up, we're going to be seeing a lot more on the mythical new China - Chinoiserie for the 2000s?

images copyright Sze Tsung Leong