Before Sunrise Photograph - Limited Edition of 1

Gu Zhongsheng 1983 Born in Jilin Province, China. Many of the people whom I love the most are deaf: My grandmother who raised me and my younger cousin who is like brother to me. I grew up with them in Yanji, in JiLin province, a small town on the border of China and North Korea. The residents spoke Korean, Mandarin and some were fluent in Russian, but I had no use for learning any of those languages. Instead, I tried to find a way to talk, outside the realm of words. With movement, with shape, and with image. Photography came to me naturally. It exists outside the confines of traditional language. It has it’s own logic and system of expression. A photograph doesn’t have to be read, it does not have to be heard. It just is. Look at it. As a Chinese man living in New York, I have taken photography as my true native tongue. My work is focused on trying to explore and expand the possibilities of photography as a method of communication. So that this visual language of mine, can be more nuanced, more meaningful, more lyrical. The focus of my work goes beyond trying to capture something visually but instead I want to capture something invisible. Perhaps something only I can see, or perhaps something that occurs in our memories.