-- Artist statement
Ordos, Inner Mongolia is a desert city undergoing rapid urban expansion on a massive scale. The discovery of large coal reserves initiated a 1.1 trillion yuan ($161 billion) government investment into a brand new city. Conceived in the early 2000s the vision was for the newly completed city to house a million inhabitants and to function as the new cultural, political and economic center of the region.
Building started in 2004 but the new district failed to attract residents and quickly gained the unwanted label of ‘Ghost City’. Local officials however insisted there was always a long term plan at play and that progress remained on track. By 2021 the city had 30% occupancy and that number is said to be rising, but it’s hard not to notice the eerie silence that is present here.
Contemporary art museums, 80,000 seater stadiums, brand new hospitals all sit vacant as if waiting for a distant future to arrive. It’s an alienating and surreal environment, the manifestation of an unimaginative yet bold vision. What will the future hold for this most uncommon city?
Anthony Reed is an English born photographer and filmmaker who works and lives in Shanghai. His practice broadly explores the subjective interpretation of the built environment and the rapid processes of change in China. In his artworks we sense the city's dense urban fabric. Tightly packed apartment blocks, recently demolished lots, abandoned interiors, isolated individuals, towering neon clad skyscrapers. All combine to reveal the cities’ multifaceted nature. People are transforming the world but also simultaneously being transformed by it. Reed enjoys to present the transformation of ‘the physical matter’ through time, and also the never-changing intangible loneliness and solitude that is attached to the people in the great metropolises.
For him, cities are where lonely people stay crowded together. He captures this contrast in his pictures and explores abstract emotions with figurative imagery. Walking like the ‘Long March’ is his usual methodology, as it takes him to the clearest state of mind. Searching without a destination with a camera is his own therapeutic way of photographic practice. The world is a thriving, promising, and sometimes depressing place. Photography is his optical meditation and reaction mechanism to deal with the world in the vortex of turbulence. With millions of people living in one place, the extensive walking, exploration and documenting is a way of recording these multiple facades of the world in drastic transition, no matter if it is progressing or regressing, as they carve marks in history, the imagery represents slices of moments of the collective memories.
