PhotoSpring’s opening weekend was chaotic, as a slew of visitors, both local Chinese and uprooted expats, flocked to CaoChangDi to see opening speeches by the festival’s directors and to peruse the multitude of exhibitions, including “Crossovers: The 2012 Three Shadows Photography Award.” The fourth installment of this award drew an eclectic range of young Chinese photographers, who, for the most part, seemed to have used a digital technology for their photographing or printing processes.

What stood out the most were those who pushed their processes and subject matter towards a more traditional perspective, one that was void of the blatant use of today’s digital technologies. Although anthropologic and thus somewhat dull in subject matter, Luo Bin successfully produced a series of ambrotype photographs.  A process readily used in the 1850’s, and one that outdated the first, yet expensive photographic process, the daguerreotype, it intriguingly juxtaposes the brightly colored inkjet prints. Further, a photographer by the name of Zhang Jin, who went on to win one of the two top prizes, exhibited a series on the Silk Road from Chang’an to Yangguan that he had photographed in a manner dedicated to the landscape’s form and evoking a very Edward Weston-like feel. Zhang Kechun, a young photographer from the emerging Chengdu art scene, also caught my eye with his series titled “The River Rushes North,” as he cinematically captured society’s fringe population at work in their muted, yet beautifully pastel worlds.

Zhang Kechun’s Work (Above + Below)

Zhang Jin’s Work (Above)

In a new space adopted by Three Shadows for the duration of PhotoSpring and whose entrance was made known by a newly created hole in the wall, Jillian Schultz curated an intriguing exhibition on the world’s poverty lines. Having started in Beijing, the project examined the poverty lines of fifteen countries around the world by photographing the foods one could buy on a daily basis living at a country’s poverty line. Photographs of these foods, such as nine manto (a bready food often eaten in China), seven croissants (France), six bagels (US), enabled the audience to quite literally understand the meaning of living in poverty, a concept unknown to many who are able to afford the downtime luxury of perusing art.

Finally in Three Shadow’s newly designed +3 Gallery, Leslie Hook curated “Symphony of Time & Light,” photographic works by the Japanese Hisaji Hara. In a series that juxtaposes the same images in both large, digital inkjet prints and smaller, albumen prints, Hara uniquely recreates scenes from Balthus’ paintings. Yet unlike the French-Polish painter who rejected the standard art world notions of critical assessment, Hara delves deep into questioning the significance of photography as a means of “reproduction of the immediate world.” Thus resulting in his desire to show his works as a production of both a modern technology and a traditional craft.

Hisaji Hara’s Work (Above + Below)

Given the lack of infrastructure to support not-for-profit organizations and events in China, we can only hope that festivals such as PhotoSpring continue to flourish in the years to come.

It has been thirty-seven days since Ai Weiwei was detained at the Beijing Capital International Airport just before boarding a flight to Hong Kong. Other than a few vague, disparate statements, including a one-line report that he was under investigation by police and a threatening warning that Ai “will pay the price”, officials have said little about his whereabouts or the exact reason for his detainment. The day Ai was detained, fifty officers came to his studio, searched the premises, and confiscated laptops and the hard drive from his main computer. Ai’s studio partner, Liu Zhenggang, and his driver, Zhang Jingsong, have been missing since April 9th. And his assistant, Wen Tao who was escorted with Ai by officials at the airport has been missing ever since.

Ai Weiwei, who is both an internationally renowned artist and an outspoken critic of the regime, was born in Beijing on August 28,1957. The next year, during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, his parents, who were poets, were sent to a labor camp in Shihezi. They were held for sixteen years before being reunited with their son and returning to Beijing in 1975.

In 1981, Ai moved to New York as a young artist and lived there until his father became ill and he returned to China in 1993. While in New York, he studied at Parsons School of Design and shot over 10,000 photographs. Ai Weiwei: New York 1983-1993, a new publication available at the ICP Library, contains a selection of the several thousands of photographs Ai took while he was living in the city. These 226 beautiful black and white photographs, initially selected for an exhibition at Three Shadows Photography Centre in 2009, offer insight into Ai Weiwei’s thoughts on New York City, its art world, and its activism.

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Since returning to China in 1993, Ai Weiwei has become one of the Chinese government’s most prominent internal critics. Many believe his detention is the result of the government’s fear that his activism will incite a “jasmine revolution” similar to the people’s uprisings in the Middle East and Africa. In May 2009, Ai’s blog, where he posted videos, photos, and his political opinion, was shut down by the government. In January 2010, his studio in Shanghai was demolished under the premise that he had failed to obtain the correct planning permits for the building.  Shortly before his detention, Ai posted the following on his Twitter account: “I didn’t care about jasmine at first, but people who are scared by jasmine sent out information about how harmful jasmine is often, which makes me realize that jasmine is what scares them the most. What a jasmine!”

Follow news and events related to Ai Weiwei’s detention: http://freeaiweiwei.org

Sign a petition for Ai Weiwei’s release: http://www.change.org/petitions/call-for-the-release-of-ai-weiwei