Photography: Shanghai Photolog

For a majority of 2008, I've been in and out of Shanghai on a job, out of which I've spent about half a year in total there. In the most populated city (over 20 million) of the most populated country in the world (1.3 billion), I felt totally alone. Especially when I can't even read the menu to order food...


A Collision of Generations (2008)

The colors of the pictures convey my mood during my stay there; that and the fact that the Shanghai in my mind hails from the 1920s. In reality, the Shanghai of today is anything but. With its salad-tossed mix of structures and infrastructures from different eras (1800s to modern sky scrapers), she is an enigma suffering from an identity crisis, schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder.

She's part French, part British, part American and part Chinese. Having abandoned her traditional values for modern capitalistic beliefs, she's all dressed up in the sexiest trends but still clings on to her old-fashioned undergarments.

It all makes for a really exotic dame, full of excitement at every moment, the unknown at a turn of every street and alley... At least she isn't harboring a multitude of diseases (crime). ;)

Here she is in (not all) her glory. Save yourself the trouble of scrolling down by clicking on the link below to view it in a slideshow. Hope you like them as much as I enjoyed making them.
WARNING: Flickr slideshow displays images stretched to fit your screen. Should you find some of the images blurry or distorted, click on 'options' at the upper right corner of the slideshow and uncheck 'Embiggen small things to fit screen'.
Shanghai Slideshow

Or if you prefer to do some leg work, scroll on down. 22 pictures in all.


Left: A Collision of Generations II (2009)
Right: Streets of Shanghai - Wired III (2009)
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Left: The Pauper Piper (2009)
Right: Of Billboards and Golden Facades II (2009)
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Of Billboards and Golden Facades I (2009)
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The Man Who Sold the World (2009)
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Streets of Shanghai IX (2009)
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Left: Streets of Shanghai - Wired II (2009)
Right: Incoming (2008)
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Left: Alleyways of Shanghai IV (2009)
Right: Alleyways of Shanghai I (2008)
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Left: Alleyways of Shanghai III (2009)
Right: Streets of Shanghai - Wired I (2008)
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Alleyways of Shanghai II (2008)
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Backstreets of Shanghai I (2008)
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Backstreets of Shanghai II (2008)
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Backstreets of Shanghai III - The Bamboo Wars (2008)
Also known as They Save Jackie Chan
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Backstreets of Shanghai IV - Not Bird Watching (2009)
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Backstreets of Shanghai V - The View from Below (2009)
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Backstreets of Shanghai V - Twilight(2009)
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Backstreets of Shanghai VI - Rising Star (of consumerism) (2009)

If you're interested in my mindless commentary on these picture, just click on the image. The entire collection can be found on my Flickr Photoset here

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