From the mountains of Tibet to the coastal fishing villages in the South-east, people in China and indeed all over the world have long been reshaping nature to cultivate food. This human expression of both creativity and survival results in unintentional landscapes and visual patterns that describe ancient cultures, traditions and their culinary roots. 'Water and Earth' is a new photographic series by the award winning Tugo Cheng 郑振扬 based on Chinese vernacular landscapes, their rhythm and beauty caused by human transformation of the land and the sea.
This body of work, comprising mostly of drone aerial shots, shows how magical nature can be when man works in harmony with it, which is becoming ever more challenging with the growing population and its impact on the planets resources. The photographs remind us of a simpler time, prior to mechanised farming and mass production, of slower farming practices or what is now fashionably coined as ‘slow food.’ These traditions function on both a human and animal ‘scale’ - their limitations mean that what is harvested maintains the equilibrium of the eco-system. Human technology was once by its own inherent nature ‘in-tune’, what was taken from the Earth was not, as is now, hugely disruptive and destructive to the natural world.
With his camera and drone in hand, Cheng travelled to witness these stories of humanity all over China and to capture the local wonders of tea and rice terraces, puzzles of salt fields and the like. These images reveal the picturesque sceneries behind what we consume day-to-day, such as rice, tea, wheat, fish, oil and salt. These fundamentals have been harvested for thousands of years and connect us directly to our ancestors.
As a Fine Art photographer with an Architect’s eye, his full-time profession, Cheng is always in search of order and rhythm in everything he sees. His works are celebrated for their unconventional geometries and patterns that are reminiscent of ink paintings, as well as the affluent colours and textures that illuminate the most surreal and remote terrains on Earth. This project will result in a new photo-book to be released later in 2020.
“I wanted to make that connection between nature and the people who work that land, I wanted to show how we shape nature ... If you look closely, you can see one or two people in each image.”
More information: www.tugocheng.com
