Paris Photo 2025: Paris

Counter-Trajectories: The Negative Form of the Image

Solo Project of WANG Ningde

Since the mid-1990s, WANG Ningde has engaged photography as a means to intervene in social reality and the re-presentation of historical memory. At that time, still working as a media professional, he had already begun consciously recording moments that moved him during his work. His early series Dancing in the Outskirts of a Small Town documents a specific social reality, focusing on itinerant performance troupes that, like gypsy communities, roamed China’s peripheral towns in the 1990s, revealing their authentic modes of survival. China at the time was marked by the tension between rapid macroeconomic growth and the lag of individual cultural development. While first-tier cities benefited from policy incentives and terms such as “going into business,” “open economy,” and “stock market” inspired optimism for the new millennium, in the remote towns chosen by these “nomadic” troupes, even a television was a rare and novel object. Each troupe would temporarily rent a theater—or sometimes simply pitch a tent—upon arriving in a new town. Within these makeshift stages, they performed song and dance, magic, qigong, and acrobatics; the performances by female actors containing erotic elements were often the most popular among audiences. In a society dominated by patriarchy and rigid gender norms, women who exposed their bodies—“wives” or “young women”—were generally not accepted by the troupes. Yet these girls, far from their hometowns, found courage among one another, confidently presenting themselves in WANG Ningde’s lens, their expressions proud yet relaxed. This series was later acquired by the French Ministry of Culture in 2003.

Since 1999, WANG has been developing the ongoing series Some Days, transforming photography into a conceptual exploration of memory, history, and fiction. Born at the end of the Cultural Revolution, WANG did not experience it firsthand, yet he grew up amidst the remnants of that historical period. Like all of us, when recalling childhood, personal experiences inevitably intersect with history, filtered through the lens of time—narratives may persist, sometimes even edited, while details are repeatedly selected and modified in retelling. At first glance, the figures in Some Days appear dressed in era-specific attire—Zhongshan suits, tracksuits, and the like—set against authentic historical locations such as factories, schools, old train carriages, or mid-20th-century parks. Yet, upon closer inspection, viewers notice that the figures wear heavy stage makeup reminiscent of model operas, pose stiffly, and often have their eyes closed or backs turned to the audience; the settings themselves are assembled with a rigid, almost film-set-like symbolism. While black-and-white photography often conveys an air of historical authority or finality, the monochrome in Some Days deliberately blurs the boundary between reality and fiction. By manipulating light and shadow, the series renders its fabricated history difficult to distinguish from the real. As the artist notes, “Memory is unreliable,” and the presumed truth and authority of photography are equally uncertain.

In 2007, WANG Ningde resigned from his position as a photojournalist to become a full-time professional artist, and in 2009 he held his solo exhibition Let There Be Light. In Greek, the word for photography combines “light” and “drawing,” literally meaning “painting with light.” Naturally, light is the most essential element in photography—without it, whether at the inception of the medium or in its rapid contemporary development, no image can exist. As described in the Bible, on the first day of creation, God said, “Let there be light,” and the world emerged from chaos into clarity. Similarly, in art, it is light that allows the expression of individuality and character, and provides the possibility of being seen. During this period, WANG began exploring another dimension of light and shadow, one that does not only exist in frozen moments captured by the camera. In the work After the Last Supper, he imagined the scene after the meal, when people had left and the table remained empty. Using a combination of sunlight and ultraviolet light, he exposed images onto paper and linen, creating traces of the table as if the meal had truly taken place. In this work, traces of the divine seem to linger, reflecting WANG’s unique meditation on the concept of the “moment” and the interplay of light, time, and memory.

Continuing this exploration, WANG Ningde’s Negative Light/Infinite Filling series is inspired by his investigation into the viewer’s perspective and perception. Each work is composed of opaque steel, highly reflective mirrors, and photographs. When viewed head-on, the surface appears as a smooth, uninterrupted mirror, reflecting the viewer’s full image. However, as the observer shifts their angle, shadowed patterns hidden behind a second layer of mirror gradually emerge. Through the movement of the viewer’s body, one gains access to the work’s full composition, while simultaneously becoming an involuntary part of the image itself. The layered sections resemble theatrical stage sets, simulating illusory spatial depth within a limited physical space.

By 2013, WANG Ningde’s Form of Light series had reached a mature stage. He developed a distinctive optical language, gradually applying it with confidence: by projecting light from specific angles onto meticulously arranged transparent panels within lightboxes, he composed complete images from fragmented shadows. In this series, WANG frequently selected natural landscapes such as skies, clouds, water ripples and branches—elements evoking vastness, mystery, or the void—which harmonize with the works’ focus on shadow as the primary medium. WANG challenges the traditional paradigm of photography, no longer fixated on a single, complete, and fixed image to carry meaning. Instead, he isolates the fundamental essence of photography—light and shadow—as the core expressive element. The full experience of the Form of Light series requires stage-like lighting, yet even glimpses of the works under scattered light are mesmerizing for viewers.

In recent years, WANG Ningde has increasingly deconstructed and reconfigured the language of photography—its tools, elements, even the processes and chemicals involved in image formation—exploring the medium’s conceptual boundaries. In his latest The Deluge series, he transforms traditional photographic subjects into tangible carriers of the work, while replacing photography’s foundational element—light—with water (specially formulated ink), subverting the conventional notion of Photogram. For this series, WANG established a studio in his hometown in northeastern China, near the North Korean border. Through intensive observation and study of local plants, he traced cultural threads connecting different nations and histories. The artist collected leaves, branches, and seeds from the mountains, arranging them on photographic paper, then submerged them in the specially prepared ink. Over several weeks, as the ink slowly dried, the plants left traces of time on the paper. The creation of the images thus becomes an organic, generative process, akin to the myth of a great flood, with the world revealing itself and taking new form after the waters recede.