Fangzhou Yu

Fangzhou Yu

Green Walkway

Being in the center of Chicago, I feel that there are industrial elements everywhere around me, and I rarely feel the purity from nature. The high-rise buildings in all directions are also an invisible pressure to me, even a little breathless. The sense of freedom from forests, lakes, and the sea is what I yearn for, and it is also a utopia without a sense of restraint.

My goal is to rebuild Chicago's subway. As we all know, the subway in every city will bring us words such as industrialization, filthy, and dim. Therefore, I tried to build a "Utopia" subway station somewhere in industrialized Chicago. This project focuses on human beings who have lived in cities for a long time, and they are getting farther and farther away from nature. I hope that through this work, I try to narrow the distance between humans and the "utopia" of nature. I use elements from nature and the interaction between people to express the inseparable relationship, so I plan to move natural elements to each subway station, such as trees, grass, soil, flowers, etc.

After the transformation of this subway station is established, it will bring more benefits to modern society. First of all, after the subway environment is improved, citizens will begin to take more public transportation in the future to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Second, other cities started to imitate our place and build a greener future environment. Finally, considering that there are lots of homeless people in the city, the construction of this kind of subway station can provide a more comfortable place for homeless people to rest. At the same time, this way of moving nature into the city can provide psychological comfort and reduce the suicide rate.

Artist Statement

Film photography is an artistic medium that I like so much. It is a way to preserve the originality of photography by directly exposing landscapes or people on film to form a record. Every time I shoot the film, I will use the chemicals to wash the film and then go through the dust before scanning to get the film, which is different from digital photography. I am in awe of original film photography; the slow process will also bring me a lot of curiosity.

I am also full of awe for nature. In my work Wave, I explore how to find out the way to shoot the shape of water using a huge mirror and a white flower. The central part of this photo is a white flower and mirror in the middle, and the rest is the lakeshore and water waves. It mainly focuses on mirrors and flowers. The background is only the lakeshore, but the main body is on the half-bottom side. When setting up the scene, I put the mirror in the water on the shore and then put a fake flower on the mirror to shoot. I try to explore that every trace in nature is different, such as leaves, soil, and water ripples. So, I want to explore the uniqueness of each element in nature.

The inspiration for this work came from the Japanese photographer Rinko Kawauchi. All her pieces use film photography without post-processing through electronic products. She has awe and sincerity towards nature and expresses her curiosity about the little things around her by magnifying the details of life and nature.

This case inspired me to magnify the details around nature. In an era, full of industrialization, embracing nature is a kind of utopia and a way of decompression. For example, place a pot of plants on the table. After a few hours of fatigue, looking at the plants on the table is a kind of relaxation both physically and psychologically. This is the existence of a small utopia. When human beings maintain their life in society, I believe urban parks, nature reserves, and even a tiny flower bed will become an element of separation from the industrialized society.

Artist Bio

Fangzhou Yu (BFA 2023) was born in Lishui, China, and is a conceptual photographer. His works address the relationship between human beings and nature. He uses elements from nature and the interaction between people and these elements to convey inseparability. The natural environment is a way of escape, away from the industrial environment. The photos he took are a kind of emotional substitution, making it a medium for exploring the relationship between natural utopia and human beings. Nature is recorded most gently, incorporating personal touch into the film, mixing with the tranquility of the shooting. All the tiny things in life are magnified by him using imaging methods