Above image by Kurt Tong.

Here’s another look at a pairing of work that we loved: Kurt Tong’s project ​“Sweet Water, Bitter Earth” and Patrick Wack’s project ​“Out West.”

In their respective projects, roaming particular regions within China, both Patrick Wack and Kurt Tong work through the complicated facets of their own capacity to romanticize the land. The photographic stories they produce benefit from their introspective efforts. Both artists display candor as they grapple with the responsibility of representing a particular place, even as they struggle to know and understand the regions that have called to their imaginations.

For Tong, the call came from the desire to connect with his motherland. For Wack, the call came from the modern day frontier. Anticipating the adventure of the outer limits, Wack set out to explore Xinjiang, China’s westernmost region. He deftly documented the many faces of the natural and cultural landscapes of the region. Wack’s image of an old armchair and makeshift table, abandoned in front of a majestic wilderness, seems to be channelling Richard Misrach’s work without even knowing it. His palette of sand and oil conjure the aesthetics of the American western tradition. Wack uses the act of the photographic search as a metaphor for himself as well. He describes the process as an emotional journey ​“of what it means to strive, and for what.”

Both projects search for cultural identity, and they both acknowledge an inability to create a clean and tidy box from what they’ve found. Looking to his ancestral roots, Kurt Tong returned to his motherland to the cities of Zhongshan and Guangzhou, where his ancestors lived and worked. He came to the project, his mind pre-loaded with nostalgic images, in search of connection and a place of belonging.

In Chongqing III, at the left side of the frame, a solitary man walks down a bit of dirt road with hands folded behind his back, and a highway overhead. To his right, there is a fragment of what we imagine to be the old, traditional city. Although now dilapidated, it carries echoes of a poetic and pastoral past. In front of the man spreads a horizon of modern city buildings, which look equally worn. To which world does the man belong? His presence on the road that straddles these two spheres is a question mark, as Tong does not reveal where he is coming from or where he is going. Perhaps this man’s life, like Tong’s, exists not in one place or the other, but somewhere in between the two.

Photography is captivating in the sense of reality that it conveys. A picture so instantly places the viewer in the world of the photograph, often without much awareness that the artist’s hand is shaping and filtering what is seen.Both projects transport the viewer and communicate aesthetically and emotionally about the places they depict. They exemplify qualities that makes the photographic medium so particularly powerful, a rich combination of immediacy, subtle narrative, and beauty.

- Lisa Woodward + Mia Dalglish

View more by Kurt Tong here, and Patrick Wack here.