Zhao Qian: 2017 LENSCRATCH Student Prize Honorable Mention Winner

Zhao Qian: 2017 LENSCRATCH Student Prize Honorable Mention Winner by Aline SmithsonJuly 16, 2017

©Zhao Qian

Congratulations to Zhao Qian , a student at the California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA, for winning Honorable Mention in the 2017 Lenscratch Student Awards. His project, offcut, the edge, speaks to being a stranger in a strange land, seeing things anew, without the context of knowing cultural norms. His eye is drawn to odd juxtapositions that create a visual diary of sorts allowing us to see the absurdity of the familiar. Zhao has had many recent successes with his work being exhibited in festivals and publications around the globe and having the opportunity to attend numerous artist residencies, with more coming in 2018.

Zhao Quin is a photographer and artist, who was born in China and currently lives in San Francisco. He has exhibited internationally such as Unseen Photo Fair (Holland) Fotografia/International Festival of Rome (Italy), PhotoNOLA (USA), FOTOFESTIWAL/International Festival of Photography in Lodz (Poland), Copenhagen Photo Festival (Denmark), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), Singapore International Photography Festival (Singapore) and Organ Vida – International Photography Festival (Croatia). His work has been featured in publications such as LensCulture, Gup Magazine, Fraction Magazine, Invisible Photographer Asia, YET magazine, Aint-Bad, paper journal and This Is Paper.

Zhao Qian has received Vermont Studio Center Residency and Fellowship, The Cow House Studio Artist Residency and Grant and the Kala Art Institute Residency Program. His Offcut, the edge has been selected as 11th Reminders Photography Stronghold Grantee.

©Zhao Qian

offcut, the edge

I flew to San Francisco from Shanghai on August 11, 2014. The whole journey extended 9,872 miles, and the flight took 10 hours and 50 minutes. The time difference between Shanghai and San Francisco was 15 hours, so I took three days to get adjusted. I slept for at least ten hours each day.

This series is based on my daily life and imagination. I keep a distance from the city I now live in. Landmarks, shopping malls and new neighborhoods help me to constructed an unreal city in images and memory: a fictitious city that is based on an actual place but that is transformed by an associative process. With people seeming to appear out of mist, the slightly off-kilter images connect to something odd but interesting. These images ask viewers to look again, to step closer, to investigate what might be there in that other dimension.