
Shi Guorui 史国瑞
Island Eastern Corridor Link Hong Kong 15-16 Aug 2015 , 2015

Shi Guorui captures sweeping images of cityscapes and natural vistas using a camera obscura, an antique photographic technique of exposing light-sensitive paper to subjects through a tiny pinhole. Though his technique shows an affinity for the past, Shi’s subjects of choice are distinctly contemporary: he has produced images of Ground Zero in New York, urban sprawl in the American West, and sites of Chinese development and environmental encroachment, all captured in a dynamic blurry monochrome that lends the scenes a sense of timelessness. Shi spends hours framing and calculating each shot in his makeshift, onsite darkrooms, a meditative process stemming from his survival of a traumatic car crash. “I want to take a long time for everything,” he says. “I wanted to choose a method that is completely suited to my interior landscape. So my body, my thinking, all mesh with this kind of method.”


Shi Guorui captures sweeping images of cityscapes and natural vistas using a camera obscura, an antique photographic technique of exposing light-sensitive paper to subjects through a tiny pinhole. Though his technique shows an affinity for the past, Shi’s subjects of choice are distinctly contemporary: he has produced images of Ground Zero in New York, urban sprawl in the American West, and sites of Chinese development and environmental encroachment, all captured in a dynamic blurry monochrome that lends the scenes a sense of timelessness. Shi spends hours framing and calculating each shot in his makeshift, onsite darkrooms, a meditative process stemming from his survival of a traumatic car crash. “I want to take a long time for everything,” he says. “I wanted to choose a method that is completely suited to my interior landscape. So my body, my thinking, all mesh with this kind of method.”