FEATURED ARTIST FRIDAY: Jiawei Deng

"The Invisibles"

"I have been in love with my 35mm film camera since I took a photography course in high school. I spent my 2019 summer in my hometown Canton China. Over the two and a half months, I have taken over 20+ rolls of film, mostly black and white film. I have developed most of them in the photography studio on campus. But, this submission is digitally scanned and exported for digital publishing.

​"The Invisible" series captured lower class or homeless people on the street. Over the past decade, China has developed very rapidly. The cities are growing, and people are living in a better life. However, the number of low-class population has also increased. Those low-class workers are always getting ignored by society. They are around to build the cities better, cleaning up the trash, or rebuilt the road. They helped to make our community better. So I took images of different faces and different professions that hang out around one of the most popular streets in Canton, The Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street.

​This image (the one that was selected for spring) is the main cover image I chose for the "Invisible" series. The elder man is sitting by a pillar outside of a milk tea store. He is wearing dirty clothing, messy hair, and a pair of very old shoes. When a young couple toss an empty bottle and missed the trash can near him, he stood up slowly and helped to collect it.  He is probably collecting them to sell to recycling place to make some money. From his eyes, I see disappointment and hopelessness. But he is still out there making a living own his own, using his hand instead of begging food from people.

I believe this is an successful journalistic image. I have took many different staged photo, but this composition is not planned but intentional. The pillar, the trash can and the resturant sign they are all parallel to each other. The texture of the trash bag and the texture of the wall also adds an interesting elements to the image. This series are particular hard for me to finish, because capturing people that are around us living in a different "life styles" makes me emotional. But most of them are happy, such as this worker here. Life is hard, but we all find happiness differently. “

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