China today represents a constantly evolving economic giant, destined to play an increasingly crucial role in the global geopolitical balance. Second world economic power after the United States, it boasts a population of 1,4 billion inhabitants and represents the most populous state in the world as well as the fourth in terms of territorial extension. This exhibition hosted at the Forte di Bard is dedicated to the China of yesterday and today and its social and economic transformations and its many contradictions. This is an unpublished photographic project curated by the internationally renowned photographer Martin Parr, promoted by Forte di Bard and by the Magnum Photos Agency, set up in the Cellar room until November 17th.
From the creation of the Magnum Photos agency in 1947 to the present, its numerous members and affiliates have traveled and immortalized China in its various parts. Within the diversified panorama of photoreportages created, those of the two photographers protagonists of the exhibition Marc Riboud and Martin Parr stand out.
In his long career Marc Riboud (1923-2016) traveled to China numerous times and was able to document, starting from the XNUMXs, the different phases, even the most dramatic, of the country's long process of transformation. Riboud underlined how the Chinese are not intimidated by the photographic lens and, thanks to this attitude, he managed to immortalize an aspect of China little known in the West, that of daily life.
The first photograph of China, of a woman headed on a train to Guangzhou, is on display in the exhibition. In his numerous trips to China, the last of which was in 2010, Riboud has visited much of the country taking stunning images of daily Chinese life, from the world of work to that of leisure.
Martin Perr, however, bears witness to the most modern China starting from his first trip in 1985. He himself states that he was deeply fascinated by "consumerism" and for him the main subjects are luxury and modernity. On display are the first twelve shots of his first Chinese reportage, in which Parr testifies to the life of some economic sectors, such as the jewelery and textile industries, the world of free time, including Tai Chi exercises and lunches at McDonald's . His shots are a precious testimony of the transition from the communist economy to the new modern economic development, stating in 1997 that "today's China looks a lot like Chicago".
