Portraits of Wuhan | The Paper
Zhong Ruijun—The Paper
A man with salt-and-pepper hair in a three-piece suit, a woman in a full-body protective suit wearing a cross-body purse and a big shopping bag on her shoulder, a barber donned with a DIY back-facing breathing tube for work. These are people photographed by Zhong Ruijun in the streets of Wuhan in early April, around the time the city reopened. Zhong has extensive experience photographing celebrities, but he thinks people who are not trained to pose for photos reveal more of themselves in front of his camera. He was intrigued by the eye-catching style and surreal elements in them, but refrained to describe them as fashion; it seemed inappropriate in the time of a crisis, when some choices are aesthetic while others are purely practical. This body of work becomes “Wuhan Faces.” “The masks hide their faces, but cannot hide the light in their eyes. These faces are the portraits of life in Wuhan right now,” Zhong wrote.
Caption information
A man with salt-and-pepper hair in a three-piece suit, a woman in a full-body protective suit wearing a cross-body purse and a big shopping bag on her shoulder, a barber donned with a DIY back-facing breathing tube for work. These are people photographed by Zhong Ruijun in the streets of Wuhan in early April, around the time the city reopened. Zhong has extensive experience photographing celebrities, but he thinks people who are not trained to pose for photos reveal more of themselves in front of his camera. He was intrigued by the eye-catching style and surreal elements in them, but refrained to describe them as fashion; it seemed inappropriate in the time of a crisis, when some choices are aesthetic while others are purely practical. This body of work becomes “Wuhan Faces.” “The masks hide their faces, but cannot hide the light in their eyes. These faces are the portraits of life in Wuhan right now,” Zhong wrote.