Our journey, as is the sea of stars
September 11, 2013 1:49 PM   Subscribe

Get lost in 75 forum pages full of amazing photography taken in China (Central North China chase Star Travels). The itinerary (You can also step through just the images from the itinerary link and avoid the forum posts. First link processed through Google Translate. This is not photography done by tourists. These guys are good.
posted by spock (16 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite
 
the ultimate roadtrip, great shots - nice find!
posted by ruelle at 1:56 PM on September 11, 2013


Their car is teaming with gadgets and gear, fascinating to see Chinese consumerism outpacing the West.
posted by stephencarr at 2:09 PM on September 11, 2013


"This is not photography done by tourists. These guys are good."

Am I understanding correctly that your implication that all tourists take bad photographs?
posted by komara at 2:09 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


My local tourist advocacy organization will hear of this!
posted by history_denier at 2:14 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


komara: ""This is not photography done by tourists. These guys are good."

Am I understanding correctly that your implication that all tourists take bad photographs?
"

Am I understanding correctly that you disagree with this universal truth?
posted by IAmBroom at 2:19 PM on September 11, 2013


"Am I understanding correctly that you disagree with this universal truth?"

As a photographer who has occasionally touristed, yes.
posted by komara at 2:38 PM on September 11, 2013


Tip: To only see posts from the original poster, hit the '只看楼主' button near the top (third blue button from the right.)

One of the three guys went on the trip during his honeymoon!
posted by of strange foe at 2:51 PM on September 11, 2013


If I read it correctly, these guys were sponsored by various companies. So their gear (and car) may not be entirely consumerism on their part, but I would imagine that more consumerism is the virus that the sponsoring companies are wishing to spread.
posted by spock at 2:55 PM on September 11, 2013


I'm envisioning an XKCD Venn diagram of Tourists, Good Photographers, and a teeny slight overlap of the circles labeled Good Tourist Photographers (where we would find Komara).
:)
posted by spock at 3:01 PM on September 11, 2013 [2 favorites]


They must have spent as much time unpacking and packing camera equipment as they did on actual photography! That's one tightly-loaded vehicle.
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:21 PM on September 11, 2013


I don't like what these pictures say about what the global village can expect of China's new kids on the block. The people on this road trip are completely and dangerously self-absorbed. It's a journey of vapid discovery. Where some boys with cash-time climb into a cramped car to seek out, capture and post the few spare moments they spent in the open air. In those moments, they try and step into the pages of the various life style magazines that have shaped their un-examined post-pubescent but still unfinished brains. They are finally out of The Bubble. They are free of parents, school, structure etc.. and out in The World. Yet, all they can do is obsess over toys and try and fit into some vapid stylistic montage they've been sold. They look lost in a place that isn't on any map.

Go in for amazing photography... but stay for the metropolis of postures and posing with cigars, booze, a desert, an old man, a car, some gadgets, other random stuff like a crow, another picture of their car, some gadgets, other stuff we didn't really need but packed anyways like a big freak'n knife, more random stuff - but this stuff is old and a bit rusty so a Good Backdrop For Me - The Star - on the side of the road, in a few fields, more gadgets again and a lot of sun glasses and smoking. See how easy it is to go so far and yet see so little!

We in America are masters of the road trip. We've seen these pictures before. You got Kung Fu China and Europe may have fine art. But we are the old world sages of road trips and we can read your postcard pics like tea leaves and see your souls. Is this the best you got China? As your newly rekindled nation embarks on life's highway of self-discovery, is this what your inside will let you see outside of you? You are sending us vintage 'Ego Trip' porn photos and this is cause for concern because it's such egos writ large on the national scale that let ruckus loose on the world.

Sure, these pictures may get you laid when you get back to The Straussian City. But what will they tell you when you look back twenty years from now? What were you feeling? What were you thinking? About Tao, Socrates, Zen, time, space, poverty, justice, karma, people you meet? Something more than how you must look in the lens? Anything? What crisis did you overcome? What darkness did you plumb? Who the hell are you? These pictures are all pretend and no substance.

As a kind of symbol these pictures resonate with the whole vibe I get from China these days. It's not just from these pictures, but it looks like - culturally speaking - China is ripe for a Cultural Jack Kerouac or something similar to rekindle that soul that gets lost in the generational rush to materialism that is clawing your way back to the top of Maslow's pyramid from post-poverty periods. I see a youth that is sheltered and hollowed out by a cheap narcissistic and dangerously empty materialism foisted onto them as the 'gift' of an older generation that struggled nose to the grind stone to get their kids that car, camera and all that other insulation from harsher realities that informed their own childhoods. Welcome to the leisure class China. Use the time wisely.

If these images are the stars of the New China Generation - one that is about to inherit the mantle of most powerful country in the world - what is the world to do? America is calling here... we want our Fifties back.
posted by astrobiophysican at 4:03 PM on September 11, 2013 [3 favorites]


Sheesh astrobiophysician. Sure these guys do their posing, and I'd even forgive you if you noted some Instagram-ish processing and the Holga-like over-vignetting in the corners, but HONESTLY, I think your post says more about what is going on between your ears than it informs us of what they were thinking. Who says that China put this forward as "the best they've got"?

China is not one China. Neither is there one "America". These, presumably, city boys are out in the "rural" areas and probably every bit as lost and out of touch with their countrymen there as a NYC boy would be if he was dropped into corn & cattle country in one of what many call the "flyover" states in the U.S.

I'm not sure where you got that high horse you are on, but I can only hope that you kept the receipt. A country of over 1 Billion people and you are judging an entire generation of them by what you see of one small car full?
posted by spock at 7:07 PM on September 11, 2013 [1 favorite]


I must be confused about the definition of tourist.
posted by Brocktoon at 7:13 PM on September 11, 2013


astrobiophysican, I don't know whether you read Chinese, but you seem to be projecting much. One senses that you want them to be like WPA photographers documenting plight of the sharecroppers, and you are disappointed because the locals they photographed are too well-dressed for you.

Two of the 'tourists' are professional wedding photographers, fwiw.
posted by of strange foe at 8:20 PM on September 11, 2013


The people on this road trip are completely and dangerously self-absorbed.

...and no-one does 'dangerously self-absorbed' like America!

USA! USA! USA!
posted by pompomtom at 8:30 PM on September 11, 2013


Mod note: Deleted "meatpuppet" personal economic theory derail; carry on.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:32 AM on September 12, 2013


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