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GLOBAL WASTELAND STORIES
PhotographyEditor:Charlotte Davies
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Jasmin Zheng
I travel around the world to explore ‘the wastelands’, those dusty buildings abandoned in the modern city. Hidden in the clusters of flashy skyscrapers and forgotten by reality, these ‘wastelands’ are icons of times These places may once be boisterous and glorious but failed to catch up with the rapid pace of the rest part of the city and became ghost giants eventually. As Susan Sontag writes in OnPhotography: ‘to take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.’ Each broken beer bottle, each wooden door covered with cobwebs, and each newspaper left by a tramp has a story of their own, waiting for newcomers to collect and resurrect We have no ability to travel back in time to participate in those we have not But in the debris left by the past, we can find stories. We may never know the stories behind wastelands, but if they were recorded, there is a chance for them to be seen, and to be endowed with immortality against time. My camera serves as a tool for freezing time and preserving these stories for posterity It is also a means of selfdiscovery, as I reflect on the scenes and angles that I have chosen to capture and the motivations behind them Through this process, I gain a deeper understanding of myself and my place in the world. In the act of recording, we become both observer and participant. We are the invisible hand that shapes the narrative of the spaces we explore. And in doing so, we are recorded in turn, becoming a part of the story ourselves It is this duality that makes urban exploration such a rewarding and endlessly fascinating pursuit
