Zhang Xiao

Zhang Xiao

THE PHOTOBOOK REVIEW

Zhang Xiao’s A Hometown (Jiazazhi, 2021; 1,112 pages, €50) is an engrossing, multidimensional exploration of the artist’s hometown of Taishang Village in Shandong Province, China. An orangeand-pink marbled slipcase reveals a softcover volume of hundreds of photographs, printed on thin, uncoated paper and, appropriately, recalling an encyclopedia or field guide. There’s no wasted space here; Zhang collects more than a dozen different projects to create an exhaustive, breathless compilation about his birthplace. Throughout the book, his fourth collaboration with the Ningbo, Chinabased publisher Jiazazhi, Zhang obsessively notes how China’s rapid urbanization has transformed the social, cultural, and economic landscape of the rural village. Delving into his own ambivalent feelings of estrangement after returning home from making work in Chongqing and along China’s southern coast, Zhang produced a wide range of photographic experiments. Some appropriate the images of local photography studios to capture the aesthetics and aspirational tastes of the community, while others, such as a series of Polaroids that records every item stored in the drawers of his childhood home, tell a personal story of memory and longing.

At both the literal and thematic core of A Hometown is a smaller book within a book that contains a straightforward, documentary approach to the exploration of Zhang’s town’s terrain and its agricultural economy. While the included projects have various styles, the constellation of work that the book presents feels cogent and revelatory. Accompanying the photographs are four pieces and an interview with the artist.

“The ‘hometown’ here is no longer just an individual concept for me,” Zhang notes.

“I hope to expand the scope of it to a collective sense.” Perfectly balancing a simplicity of form with the intricacy of its content, A Hometown is a comprehensive, shifting, and ever-surprising study of homecoming.

Noa Lin