An homage to Ren Hang When art meets censorship

A talent discovered by chance that of the young Chinese photographer Ren Hang, who took his own life on the evening of Friday, February 24. This brief text is a tribute to his work, a discovery and a hymn to that delicate eroticism that made him famous.

"If life is a bottomless abyss, then when I'll jump the endless fall will also be a way to fly"
- Ren Hang, My Depression

The approach to photography of Ren Hang occurred as a vocation. After deciding to abandon advertising studies, he begins to photograph his roommate without clothes. Then his friends. "Through their naked bodies, I feel the real existence of the people (...) I do what comes naturally to me, I don't do plans". In his photographs, there aren't hidden conceptualisms or reflections, no criticism on the taboo of the naked body or its representation in People's Republic of China; no virtuosity. The bodies of his models are immersed in domestic and bucolic landscapes without bumping. A delicate and harmonious eroticism. Explicit sexuality, almost brutal, but never vulgar. Nude for Ren Hang is like an obsession that he chase shameless and fearless in spite of this will lead him several times in Chinese prisons for violation of morality.