My Place, Shanghai, China, 2005 by Jennifer Zhou

Jennifer Zhou | all galleries >> Galleries >> Everybody Has a Story > My Place, Shanghai, China, 2005


11-MAY-2005

My Place, Shanghai, China, 2005

I organized this picture by layers, gradually allowing her little world to meet the outside world. We first see an elderly woman sitting by her door, then the layer of parked bikes, and finally the tall apartments across the river. The city is changing every day. but none of that matters to her. She probably has lived here for her whole life, and will probably die here as well. The bikes suggest a way out, but she would never ride away on them. This is where she belongs.

Canon EOS 10D
1/160s f/8.0 at 50.0mm iso100 hide exif

Full EXIF Info
Date/Time	11-May-2005 12:45:13
Make	Canon
Model	EOS 10D
Flash Used	No
Focal Length	50 mm
Exposure Time	1/160 sec
Aperture	f/8
ISO Equivalent	100
Exposure Bias	-1.00
White Balance	(-1)
Metering Mode	partial (6)
JPEG Quality	(6)
Exposure Program	shutter priority (2)
Focus Distance

other sizes: small medium original auto

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fishwave		05-Nov-2005 05:36
Jennifer, first of all , it is really a nice picture. I came form this city and love this city very much. Your caption about this picture is emotional and a little sad. However, I believe the elder lady will have a much bright future life. In the side wall of the house, there are several chinese, the meaning is "removing". the old home will be pulled down by the municipality. she can get a new built apartment form the city goverment. she would not die in her old and poor room. Shanghai is changing, China is changing. I also believe that it is moving to a brighter future. Thanks for your picture, it makes me miss my home town.

Guest		10-Sep-2005 04:58
Good constrast. Brick detached house versus crowded apartment... :-)

guest		14-Aug-2005 05:15
She has been there forever. A tactile presence, outer boundary, enduring decades of knowing. The new fades in ushering decades of unknowing.

Karen Stuebing		04-Jul-2005 10:28
You actually think about what you are shooting which is why you are an such an excellent photojournalist. I love the progression in this image.

Guest		27-May-2005 23:39
Hi Jen, I saw this photo on the secret garden folder but could not see it until now... :( In any case, I am glad you decided to post it since in small it already talks quite a bit and in large it talks alot more. Seriously, I love this picture and it's composition as well as the caption you have wrote, very eloquent and nice. What do I see here... at least that you don't mention... mmmmmmm... dificult... Yes, I see an old women, an old women with much life up on her back still struggling to go throe her last days, a person marked by her carecter but also with a bit of a sad story, a bit prisoner of her self and of time. I think that one thing good of this picture comming to analize it is, as you say these two worlds specialy outstanded by the quality of the light. The shadow draws to me the life of this women as I said before and a little world that is disapearing, vulnerable to all the progress and needs that you may see behind, though in this case, somehow this progres seems positive since it is lightend by the sun (thoughts that sometimes go against my way of thinking). I see too, how in this picture progress is advancing agressevely while this women is strugling to stand that pressure, almost hiding behind the hous as for trying to to be blown by the wind of these new era, that on the other hand it makes me think of a cold and unhuman change the one that is lurking behind the women's house, probably since I don't see more then monster buildings and bikes, no human values but the values of cement and iron. Definitievly a future with little hopes. Sorry for this large description, but it isn't easy to go arround your caption to try to give more interpretation to it. :S Anyway, very nice picture. ;)

Phil Douglis		24-May-2005 03:42
****You contrast her relative immobility here to the tools of mobility -- the bikes awaiting their riders at right. She won't be one of them. It is a comment on the nature of aging. She has her little world at left but seems unable to leave it, if even for a moment. She is, in effect, a monument to her past, and by symbol, a relic of another China itself. Your multiple layers make this image even more profound, because we are not just seeing the effect of aging upon a life here, but we are also seeing China moving from being a third world country to a first world country. Yet, as you say, life in the third world is good enough for her, and by extension, for millions like her. The bikes are a transitional symbol -- they offer mobility, but only to people who are too poor to afford automobiles. Yet the building in the background implies that bikes will soon be just as archaic in Shanghai as she is.

Guest		24-May-2005 01:40
This is quite exceptional, Jen. The composition suggests, to me, she is oblivious to the changes in time around her. It's as if time has passed her by. We see her home, and style of dress--all suggesting age and wear--then we see inovation afer inovation just outside her building (from bikes, to basic metal rails, to modern buildings). It's as if time itself is represented here, in a cascading fashion, from the very old, to the very modern. It's as if all has occured withou ther even taking notice.

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