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Jennifer Zhou | all galleries >> Galleries >> Everybody Has a Story > City of Masks, Suzhou, China, 2004
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06-NOV-2004

City of Masks, Suzhou, China, 2004

Because Suzhou is a historic city that is now trying to draw many tourists, it is seems almost unreal at times.
It is like the whole city wearing a big mask of deception-- the city pretends to be something that it was a long time ago, and everyone here seems to be playing a role on this city stage. This street cleaner does not take part however. He just sits back and takes it in.


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alibenn11-Dec-2004 20:18
Hi Jen,

much of what can be said has been done so, I can just agree and say this is a great image. Really well done.
Guest 14-Nov-2004 16:37
Phil has said all I want to say..hah.One of your best works.I love it!
Jennifer Zhou10-Nov-2004 13:19
If you look more closely, Bill, you can see it is just a piece of cloth hanging on his ear----they use it to prevent dust coming in to the mouth when they are working on the street.
Guest 10-Nov-2004 11:35
I think the cleaner is making a cell call ;-)
Phil Douglis10-Nov-2004 05:42
****I love this one, Jen. It's one of my favorites because it is a spectacular example of abstract street photography. There is not an inch wasted here. Everything in it counts. You have stopped time and organized this image in an abstract, incongruous way to tell a story.

This image is about two things to me, facades and passages. A facade is a front, a deceptive cover. That building is not really a building -- it is a wall pretending to look like a building. It is virtually transparent. We can see right through it -- from a street of motorbikes to a street of buses. This place seems to be more like a stage than a street. And that is what gives this image most of its incongruity.

Passages are channels of movement. A woman zips down this street on her motorbike with her kid, roaring right off the edge of the image. A man waits to board a bus, incongruously standing in a door shaped like a fat apostrophe. I can even see bus passengers through one of those windows. Everyone is going somewhere but us.

The only person not going anywhere is a street cleaner, who sits with his back to us. We become him for the moment. He seems to know that all of the hustle and bustle around this facade is not what life is really about. Life should make room for contemplation. If we were all street cleaners, Jen tells us -- we would all have time to think, to wonder, to imagine. He may be down there at the bottom of the so-called "social ladder," but he gets to enjoy being the one-man audience here. Perhaps this street cleaner, Jen implies, is the wisest of us all. Unlike this facade and its scurrying role players, has no reason to pretend that he is something other than what he is.

Guest 10-Nov-2004 03:40
Very urbanized, same place same time and yet very different life and style...
Guest 10-Nov-2004 03:23
if I was to attempt a summary, like a gallery theme or something, I would be here for a while...it's a beautiful kind of 'through-the-looking-glass' moment...maybe something like Polanski might cook up in an aside as the main characters transit scenes...it's remarkable, Jen. It's a world.
Guest 10-Nov-2004 01:16
cool shot!
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