WUHAN RADIOGRAPHY avec tirage

WUHAN RADIOGRAPHY 
Simon Vansteenwinckel et Johan Grzelczyk 

Wuhan Radiography is a surprising work on a series of black and white analog images taken by Belgian photographer Simon Vansteenwinckel.

The first pages cast some doubt... The book's images seem real, yet ghostly. They are beautiful, too exposed, sometimes irradiated. It seems that he used a particular film. A filter or an ultrasensitive film ? Wuhan Radiography is a surprising work on a series of black and white analog images taken by Belgian photographer Simon Vansteenwinckel.

The first pages cast some doubt... The book's images seem real, yet ghostly. They are beautiful, too exposed, sometimes irradiated. It seems that he used a particular film. A filter or an ultrasensitive film ?

Scenes of life, places and urban characters look mysterious, as if captured between two universes, frozen between day and night. Here and there, a luminous halo hovers above the city, like an observing star. Through his enigmatic modus operandi, the photographer creates a disturbing dismantling of our preconceptions. We no longer know where we are. The city is indeed Wuhan, now famous worldwide. But was it before or after the pandemic? When did the photographer get lost? Has he ever been there?

The text of French philosopher and poet Johan Grzelczyk which accompanies the images makes us slip into the artificial and gleaming night. His words seem to glide on, break off, hide under the shadows by questioning our way of inhabiting a drifting world. Such dystopian atmosphere ponders overs our freedom of movement on a land where distance no longer exists, shortened by technology, where fog already seizes forgotten landscapes.

Like an echo of "La Jetée" by Chris Marker, the book brings us to discover a distant, strangely familiar city, which holds its breath under the threat of an immense sun. It echoes our resistance, our ability to reinvent ourselves, to find new ways of living in the city.

Have a look at Wuhan Radiography's teaser:

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Technical features

• Release date: 7 April 2023
• Photographs : Simon Vansteenwinckel
• Text : Johan Grzelczyk
• English translation: Harriet Thurgood
• Mandarin Chinese translation: Wei-Yang Lee
• Book format: 21 x 31 cm / Weight: 0,600 kg
• 100 pages  – 52 photographs (black and white)
• Trilingual edition: french, english, mandarin chinese
• Printed rhodoïd plastic dust jacket – Visible sewn binding with blue thread
• Photographs (88 pages) printed on Munken Print White 115gr paper + 4 pages for the maps on Fedrigoni Sirio Black 115gr paper
• Text printed in an 8-page A5 notebook on Munken Print White 115gr paper
• ISBN: 9791095118213
• Public price: 36 €

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Tirage de tête limité Wuhan Radiography 

Tirage limité au choix, numéroté, signé par le photographe
5 modèles (voir les visuels sur le produit)
10 exemplaires par modèle sur papier Hahnemühle Baryta 310 gr cadré dans un format 20 x 30 cm

Prix livre avec tirage : 150 euros 

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Awards

• Shortlisted for the Author's Book Prize of the Rencontres Photographiques d'Arles (July 2022).
• Finalist for the Nadar Prize – Gens d’Images (October 2022)

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Exhibitions and events

• from March 24 to June 26, 2022: photographic exhibition WUHAN RADIOGRAPHY organized by the foundation RUINS, in partnership with Light Motiv, at La Maison Demeure (59100 Roubaix)
• from June 4 to September 18, 2022: photographic exhibition at Charleroi Museum of Photography (6032 Charleroi)

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Press and booksellers' comments

Click here to access press kit.

« How much do we will to believe? Do we have to wait for everything to change or have we finally already crossed the border of a bygone existence? Only one certainty remains to this day: our condemnation to live constantly in doubt. And it is not this book that will get us out of our persistent torpor. Even worse: Wuhan Radiography traps us by confining us in an inextricable in-between. Here, everything is radiantly irradiated, from the floor to the glass ceiling, from the blinding skies to the surface of a troubled earth. »

Compétence Photo (January / February 2023)

« During the lockdown in 2020, Belgian photographer Simon Vansteenwinckel began a journey to the other side of the planet from his living room. Thanks to Google Maps, he explored the city of Wuhan and used his camera in front of his screen.

The result is disturbing, it is hard to believe that some images are the result of Google's automatic captures. The negatives used are not chosen at random, they are actual films previously used for medical X-rays…those that allow the diagnosis of respiratory diseases. This helps to give a mysterious and incredibly successful effect! »

Ericka Weidmann in Réponses Photo (n°349)