Lu Daosen is dead. He was 26 years old and was a freelance photographer celebrated on the Internet. Why did Lu Daosen commit suicide? The series by Chinese artist Pang Hai revolves around this question. Before his death, Lu Daosen had published his will on the Internet: the reason for developing this series. Here, Lu Daosen tells about how he was bullied as a student in the countryside. Later, alone in the city, he finds neither love nor money, only anonymity, disorder and emotional loneliness. His dreams are displaced by reality. There is no future.

In the text for the subjective surreal series, which is about loneliness and anonymity, alienation and psychosocial distance, Pang Hai writes: “In the city of stars, there is no light to illuminate it. Dreams have become endless dust that no one remembers. It is a pity that you died and I met you in this way … In the fierce competition of modern life, some disappear like animals. Others remain. The story of each is an epic full of metaphors and symbolism.”

Pang Hai. Born in 1989, lives and works in Beijing. Studied photography at the Communication University of China in Nanjing. Graduated in 2012, since then he has been working as a new media artist in photography, video, text and video editing. 2021 Lucie Scholarship Program grantee.

instagram.com/xiangfei_tian

Back to overview