File 7: Peng Ke (Changsha, Hunan Province, China, 1992)
Peng Ke grew up in Shenzhen and now lives and works between Los Angeles and Southern China. Peng states in her monograph that her works explore “individual experiences in relation to the breakneck transformation of a city.” Peng Ke received her BFA in photography from Rhode Island School of Design in 2015, and has since had solo exhibitions in Gallery Vacancy, Shanghai (2018), and in Lianzhou Museum of Photography in Guangdong (2019).
Peng Ke published her monograph "Salt Ponds" in 2018 and offered a decisively personal exploration of urbanism. Many of the images take place in Changsha, Changde, and Shenzhen, where these Southern urban centers have undergone drastic changes for the past decade since. Despite having grown up in many of these places, Peng Ke particularly focuses on public spaces and resists the urge to prescribe characteristics and instead decides to explore their interiority. Whether zooming in on sterile hospital interiors, intimate residences, or a vacant public park, Peng Ke weaves different degrees of familiarities into these codified scenes with careful consideration of their pictorial qualities. The result is a sequence of nostalgic, phantasmal scenes, simultaneously emitting detachment and familiarity.
Peng Ke’s favorite photographers: "Gradually, I have stopped looking at other photographers’ work. However, I have been meaning to see the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thai film director and screenwriter)."
Image Credit: Courtesy Peng Ke Studio
Reviewed by Felix Ho Yuen Chan, Chinese photography specialist
彭可 (1992年生于湖南省长沙市）
彭可在湖南长沙出生，并在深圳成长。她现在在洛杉矶和中国南方生活和工作。彭可在个人影集中说到她的作品“围绕高速发展的城市中的个体经验。”她于2015在罗德岛设计学院摄影系毕业，也分别在2018，2019年在上海的Gallery Vacancy 以及连州摄影博物馆举办了个展。
彭可在2018年推出了个人影集《盐水池塘》，坚定地用极个人的手法探索城市文化。系列中大部分的图像摄于坐落在中国南方的长沙，常德，以及深圳。虽然彭可在这些地方有童年的记忆，她却将目光集中于各个城市的公共空间。 她拒绝对这些新兴城市用过于诊断性的方式描绘，而是专注探索这些城市空间的内在特质。无论是在洁净的医院，拥挤的金鱼池，空荡的公园 ，彭可将对这些场景的不同熟悉感投入到了对这些图像的细密塑造中。这些充满怀旧与幻想的片段中同时夹杂了亲密与疏离。
彭克喜爱的摄影师：“嗨，慢慢不太看摄影师了，最近想看Apichatpong Weerasethakul，哈哈。”
Image Credit: 图片由彭可提供