In Search of Real-Life Images in China: realism in the age of spectacle

This essay re-examines new realism in documentary film and photography in China. Distinct from official realism, genuine realism requires that experience be seen within its real environment and characters and actions of a realist work be shaped by that environment. This principle challenges the visual regime of spectacle controlled by the expanding global cultural industry. Documentary realism represents a penetrating social comment but also recovers a materialist understanding of workers' life and conditions in China. Photo-realism on the other hand uncovers the forgotten ways of life among ordinary people in the fast modernization of the cities.