Photographs by Liang Yue
'I yearn to see a shaft of light puncture this suffocating haze - as if such a perforation would be a secret passageway leading to the time outside. No matter what time it is outside, inside it appears to be a perpetual moment of a peaceful, dusky twilight.' Liang Yue
Liang Yue, born in Shanghai in 1979, is a photographer whose work deals obliquely with the pace of change in contemporary China.
She made the Morse Code series in Beijing during China's recent, and ongoing, economic boom. Part of a larger body of work called Several Dusks, the photographs were taken during the sand storms that blow in from the desert. Along with the atmospheric pollution of the city, the sand creates a grey-yellow monochrome that evens out perception and plays with the awareness of time.
This artificial dusk suggests an imaginary, internalised twilight as a personal response to a rapidly changing environment. So doing, it sets the scene for the artist's lonely exploration of the deserted city. In an environment of headlong economic growth and urban redevelopment, the series evokes the stillness and quietness of a twilight daydream.
Written to accompany the exhibition Twilight.
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EXHIBITION: To celebrate The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, the V&A is holding an exhibition of portraits of Her Majesty by photographer Cecil Beaton (1904-1980). Presenting highlights of the V&A’s archive of Beaton’s royal photography, the exhibition will depict the Queen in her roles as princess, monarch and mother and include a number of photographs never before seen as well as Beaton’s diaries and letters
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