Xiaobei Passport 小北护照
Since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in January 2020, international transit has been hampered, foreign trade has suffered many difficulties and many Africans living in Guangzhou have chosen to leave. While Chinese foreign trade shops along the Bao han Straight Street in Xiaobei decided to shut down, customized phone cases, frames, shopping bags and keychains which had been made using African customers photos' were left unattended in the windows of abandoned shops in Xiaobei, Guangzhou, covered in dust. Perhaps because they didn't know when African customers would return to Guangzhou, the owners of the foreign trade shops didn't know what to do with the goods——to wait for their return or to put the shops up for sale.
After experiencing many twists and turns, I bought some African merchandise with customized images which represented Africans' esire for a better life in Guangzhou: pink plastic diamonds, luxury items with big logos, skyscrapers and overpasses, sunny young people in football uniforms, successful men and sexy women in decent dresses. But the truth was that these visions of beauty were sealed away in a foreign country and became a collection of wandering images.
Using the techniques of commercial product photography for reference, I recreated the goldrush dreams of the African migrants in Guangzhou by using plastic diamonds and colored pearls as props, fabric printed with counterfeit luxury goods purchased at the Bao Han Street as the background, and searched for symbolic street scenes to photograph in the way of reconstitution of their dreams.
自 2020 年 1 月新冠肺炎疫情发生以来，国际通航受阻，外贸举步维艰，许多在广州漂泊的非洲人选择了离开，而小北宝汉直街一带中国人的外贸店铺也关门大吉。非洲客户曾经用自己照片定做手机壳相框购物袋钥匙扣，就这样被留在了广州小北一个个废弃店铺的橱窗当中无人问津，许多已经布满灰尘。或是因为不知道非洲客人何时返回广州，时运不济的外贸店铺老板也不知道怎么处理这些货品：等候他们归来，或者将店铺转卖给他人。几番周折，我购买了一部分非洲人定制商品，订制的图片上是非洲人对于在广州美好生活的向往：粉色的塑料钻石、大 logo 的奢侈品、高楼大厦立交桥、 穿足球队服的阳光青年、身着⻄装革履的成功人士与性感女郎；但现实是这些美 好愿景被封存在异国他乡落了灰，成为一批漂泊的图像。
我借鉴了商业静物摄影的拍摄手法，通过重构的方式使用塑料钻石、彩色珍珠等作为道具，在宝汉直街购买的印制仿冒奢侈品的布料作为背景，并在街头寻找符号性的景观进行拍摄，还原了广漂非洲人昔日的中国“淘金梦”
。