Inside artist Cai Dongdong’s new tome History of Life
Though learning his trade as a portrait photographer while serving in the People’s Liberation Army in the 1990s, Chinese solider-turned-artistand Kurt Schwitters) via what he calls his “photo sculptures”, in which he pierces found photographs with arrows, spades and so on.
Cai Dongdong can thus often be spotted sifting in flea markets, public libraries and trash heaps in search of photography to play with. His new book,, is the result of an epic editing down of 600,000 snapshots into 415 . “My selection process was uncomplicated and swift,” he shares. “The decision to keep a photograph was based entirely on my intuition. Briefly glancing at an image comprises my visual experience of judging it … Overall, it took six years.
Oftentimes, the political creeps into the private: schoolkids salute while elsewhere a lonesome Red Army hat sits atop a pile of folded blankets. Yet, without a parade or Chairman Mao poster in sight, it can be said that Cai Dongdong was, instead of pursuing a panoramic account of history, after something more akin to a feeling. “The people’s spirit during each era was very different,” he notes.
Cai Dongdong maintains that this work is not as much of a departure from his practice as it may seem. In the spirit of a true “photo-sculptor”, he has sustained his proclivities for “piercing” photographs; this time, not with spades but with his own snapshots, which are mysteriously and seamlessly scattered throughout these pages for “the sake of continuity,” in the artist’s words.
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