“The Tower” with Xiaofu Wang
Produced by Worlds Through Minds founder, Macy Castañeda Lee.
- Name, age, where are you from, what format you like using, what are you currently working on if you are?
Hi, my name is Xiaofu Wang. I'm originally from Xiamen, China, but grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. I'm currently working with an analogue medium format camera, shooting Portra 400. I've also just published a book that I've been working on for the past 3 years. The book is called The Tower, and it's out now courtesy of Nearest Truth Editions (https://www.shop.xiaofuwang.info/product/the-tower)
Photography by Xiaofu Wang
- What about your surroundings/environments and upbringing interested you?
Growing up in the suburbs of Sydney was quiet and not particularly eventful. From the vantage point of my sleepy neighbourhood, I think we'd barely notice if the rest of the world collapsed in on itself.
I started getting into music around the age of 13 and spent a lot of my spare time looking for records and going to gigs. Most of these shows were low-key DIY or punk affairs and, being an awkward teenager, I started taking photos to give me something to do with my hands.
Around the same time I became interested in film and literature. I guess it was a form of escape from the mundanity of my surroundings and was also driven by my hunger for experience, albeit second hand experience. One writer in particular, Dennis Cooper, was a big inspiration to me at the time. He wrote transgressive fiction that explored dark themes and also had a blog cataloguing the work of contemporary and historical writers, filmmakers and artists. I still think about some of the work I found through Dennis to this day.
- When was the first time you met photography? how did you feel when you met it?
I started photographing gigs with a small point and shoot digital camera, but I quickly became interested in analogue black and white photography and took a weekend course at the Australian Centre for Photography, which had a darkroom on the premises.
I was particularly fascinated by the way the images came out when you put the photographic paper in the developer tray. The way the images began as a faint trance and then gradually became darker and more defined was pure magic to me. To this day I still find something magical about it, even though I mostly work with colour rather than black and white!
Photography by Xiaofu Wang
- Tell us about one of your photography projects, your most memorable one, and how you were able to make that happen.
Hmm, I've done two really interesting projects so far and it's hard to decide which was the most memorable! Both have had a massive impact on me, changed aspects of my world view and led to long lasting friendships.
I'll tell you about The Tower because it's the most recent. Like my previous project, We Are City Plaza, I stumbled upon the subject of this project, a huge brutalist building in New Belgrade, quite by chance. I went to Belgrade to visit my friend Alex, who had just moved there after living in Amsterdam for a few years. I'd never been there and knew very little about it.
Like many tourists, I was interested in the building because it looked like something out of a dystopian science fiction film. I ended up making eight more trips to Belgrade over the next two years, photographing the building itself and getting to know some of the people who lived and worked there.
Being a shy person, I found talking to strangers there extremely daunting at first. Luckily, I had the help of a fixer, Gavrillo, and we tag-teamed approaching people and talking to them. Gavrilo also gave me the lowdown on Belgrade's history (and its urban legends) and helped me analyse cultural codes that would've been completely lost on me otherwise. For example, he told me about the 'gaseri' kids - who were into fast cars, vaping and turbofolk - or the 'lamb guys' - balding men in suits who once filled the ranks of the Yugoslav bureaucracy and were often invited to barbecues, social relics of the previous ideology that still fulfil similar functions to this day.
Photographing The Tower was like immersing myself in a completely different world (yes, I'm aware of the voyeuristic overtones of such a statement), and something diametrically opposed to my nondescript suburban upbringing in Sydney. Researching the history of Yugoslavia also challenged the post-Cold War consensus that communism and socialism were failed systems and that Western liberal democracy is the only viable way; a reading of history which has led to disastrous consequences in the last 3 decades.
Photography by Xiaofu Wang
- How did you find your visual literacy? Why are you attracted to certain images than others?
I studied photography for 4 years at Ostkreuzschule in Berlin. Many of us students started out as 'diamonds in the rough', so to speak, and I have to give credit to my education there for helping me to refine my visual language. Before I studied photography, I already had something of a visual language, based on my time studying film in Sydney. Although some have described it as 'cinematic', I think has more to do with Tumblr content circa 2010. Think moody portraits of young people in urban landscapes and lots of neon lights.
Being at photography school and constantly discussing everyone's work has helped me develop the ability to separate the images that speak to me from those that don't. In my opinion, being able to 'kill your darlings', or look at your own images with a degree of emotional distance, is an important skill for all photographers to have.
Photography by Xiaofu Wang
- Feel free to share any photographers that has had a huge impact on your career.
During my studies I did an internship with Adam Broomberg (one half of the now divorced artistic duo Broomberg Chanarin) and we ended up working on a few projects together after that. Seeing him try to work things out artistically had a huge impact on me.
He taught me that artistic interpretation that is too literal contradicts the very act of interpretation and kills the alchemy that happens when you encounter a great work. I often remember conversations where I'd tell him what I thought was a brilliant idea and he'd just nod vaguely and change the subject. I eventually found out it was because those ideas were way too literal, haha.
He was also really good at asking completely bizarre questions and turning over stones you didn't even know existed. I don't know if I can bend my brain like that in my own lines of enquiry, but sometimes I try to get into that headspace.
- Imagine meeting someone who is picking up a camera for the first time. what do you tell them?
Have fun and try everything :)
Photography by Xiaofu Wang