Zhou Jun Zhou (Born in 1965) was born in Nanjing Province. He currently lives in Beijing and graduated from Nanjing Normal University where he studied photography in 1990. He uses large format film cameras to produce negatives, which she scans, manipulates and prints to produce large photographic works. His pieces of art embody qualities of yearning for the past to some extent and this is seen in his photographs of Beijing’s historic buildings. Jun is very much aware of the expansion of the cities in China and the loss of traditional architecture. Chinese culture is lost in the pursuit of globalization. The works that he presents as black and white photographs have overlays of red. The red color has significance in China’s cultural memory as it represents revolutionary communist ideology and is also used for ceremonial occasions such as weddings. The subject of his work is the built environment, and Zhou emphases rapid and sometimes brutal re-development in China.
Zhou Jun photographs the ever changing constructed landscape of China in black and white choosing the architectural framing and scaffolding of construction sites to add color. Zhou says that the red color which he uses to highlight specific parts of the photograph, elicits different responses in people from different cultures or countries – at times, it can even have opposite meanings for different people. Zhou wants his art to be interpreted differently by people depending on their response to the symbolic meaning of the red color. In this aspect, his art has can reveal international perspectives to common subject matter. He has exhibited in the Damien Minton Gallery, Sydney; Studio Rouge, Shanghai; Paris Beijing Photo Gallery, Paris; and Louis Vuitton, Hong Kong, among others.
