Eerie images of Chinese theme parks
BBC / May 25, 2015
People Park in Shanghai
“When there’s a blue sky, I can’t take a picture,” says Stefano Cerio. “Otherwise it might look like a holiday brochure.” In the past decade, the Italian photographer has turned his lens on ski resorts, aquaparks and cruise ships – at night or under glowering skies. His latest series, featured in the new book Chinese Fun, shares their faded hues. Roller coasters, fountains and casinos are shown beneath heavy clouds, their bright colours muted by smog.
Shijingshang Park, Beijing
Yet in this project, where the haze is a result of pollution rather than weather conditions, the light takes on another dimension. “If there is a political element, this is where it seeps in,” Cerio tells BBC Culture. “My images of Macau, one of the only places in China where gambling is legal, show just how different it is from Las Vegas. Instead of bright lights, it is foggy, with empty lagoons.” In a photograph of a frozen lake, the surface is the same colour as the slate sky. “Ice is normally white but here it’s grey because of the pollution.” This fast food stand is so blackened by smog that it seems derelict. “It’s grey and dirty, but it’s still in use.”
Little China, Shenzhen
While many photographers documenting China have filled their frames with crowds, Cerio chooses to shoot at a time when his locations are empty. This image shows statues at a park in which all of China’s historical attractions are recreated in miniature. “It’s one of the most visited parks in China, so I had to take this photo at first light. When I find a place I need to work out how to arrive at the right time.”
Treasure Island Pirate Kingdom, Qingdao
“I love to take photos of amusement parks when they’re empty – especially in China, where they are usually full of people, so the contrast is strong,” says Cerio. “I see it as taking a kind of portrait of the people who aren’t there.” This amusement park is inside a shopping mall. Cerio’s subjects were created “to welcome and be experienced by throngs of people”, writes the photography professor Walter Guadagnini in his introduction to the book. “Not a single person can be seen in these images, no functioning machinery; the spaces, which are normally perceived as limited due to the crowds that invade them, become enormous, boundless, out of scale.”
Hong Kong
In the absence of people, what might be a straightforward skyline of a megacity becomes something more ambiguous. Guadagnini writes: “Another characteristic that seems to emerge in what has been called the ‘high-rise, high-density metropolis’, namely that of density, gives way here to enormous voids, spaces that seem more like those of a terrain vague of Surrealist memory, than those of the various Gotham Cities scattered throughout China and the Far East.”
Huairou
The drab colours and lack of people contribute to a feeling that these images show deserted spaces. Yet even the dreariest settings in Cerio’s photos are still being used. This image shows a popular spot for wedding photos. “The piano isn’t real, it’s part of a photography set, a prop for brides and grooms to pose with,” says Cerio. “If a place is abandoned, I don’t want to take a photo of it because that’s not my story.”
Water Cube, Beijing
With their sense of scale, many of Cerio’s photos reflect the enormity of Chinese infrastructure projects, forlorn fun palaces taking the place of hydro-electric dams or power plants. This image shows a water park inside the National Aquatics Centre, built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. But without the slickness of architectural photographs, the spaces become more human. According to photography curator Nadine Barth, who contributed an essay to Chinese Fun, “The masses – they have also left their traces behind… Here there is space for the laughter of children, for the dripping of scoops of ice cream, for sticky hands and rosy cheeks.” Even in the seemingly empty scenes, people make an appearance. Cerio chuckles as he points at the lower right of the photo. “I only realised when I looked at this afterwards – there’s a person in the background, between the pillars.”
Ocean Park, Hong Kong
Some of his images, showing roller coasters, are like a reverse of Communist propaganda posters with gleaming tracks as workers stride into the future. Here, the tracks have peeling paint and loop in circles, some stopping mid-air. According to Guadagnini, Cerio is in pursuit of “an image found suspended in time and space, metaphysical like the tracks of a roller coaster that are interrupted, at a dizzying height, in the middle of nothing, with that always veiled, always obtusely greyish sky”.
Huairou
Cerio agrees he shares a sensibility with Dusseldorf School photographers like Bernd and Hilla Becher, who created typologies of buildings from the same perspective and with the same composition. “I take a similar approach, but my subjects are often crazy. There is a contrast between a seriousness of vision and the subject: I am attracted to what appears to be nonsense.” This giant bowl of fruit is a signpost for a fun park. As Barth argues, “the sculpture, which promises opulence and pleasure… functions as a spontaneous spot of delight when driving past… A large yellow peach has fallen out, a small plum as well. They lie on the grassy ground. And the more people smile at the fruits, the more intense the energy that the whole object exudes becomes.”
Fiona Macdonald