Images shot on Kentmere Pan 400 in the Yashica Electro 35 GSN
I’ve been to Yuhuan – a small town in China’s Zhejiang province that most people will never have any reason to go to – quite a few times now.
I’ve written about it before too, in blog posts like this one and this one and this one and this one.
Some of those posts and the photographs feel like a lifetime ago when I look at them now. And so do the shots on this one you’re reading now. Because they’re from the same roll of Kentmere Pan 400 as some of those previous ones.
I’ve just never gotten around to publishing them on here before. Until now, that is. Years later.
Time, man. It just keeps marching on.
Contents
Time marches on at pace here
A lot of these photographs fit a similar theme. Old buildings and demolition, set alongside newer developments and life going on around them.
Going on like happening, but also like progressing.
Evolving.
It’s not something unique to Yuhuan though. All over China, from small towns like this to suburbs in Shanghai and Shenzhen, buildings and communities are constantly being torn down to make way for the new.
Where I’m from in the UK, it wouldn’t be unusual for someone to live in a 100-year-old home. In China, it would be unthinkable.
Time marches on quicker there. The buildings were always only meant to last for decades rather than centuries.
The passage of time and these photographs
There was a nice little pub near where I used to live in Shanghai called Time Passage. That was its English name, at least. When I first heard it, I was picturing a physical passage. Like a tunnel perhaps.
Its Chinese name though is 昨天，今天，明天 – or Zuo Tian, Jin Tian, Ming Tian – which means Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.
So the passage in Time Passage is more like the passing of time, which is in a way less tangible than a physical passage we could go down, but also far more real to all of us. It’s inescapable.
When I first got these photographs developed, I remember not being too impressed by them. They were just some images of urban change. Some ruin and some renovation. It happens all the time.
That word again.
But time often changes your perspective on things.
Looking back on these a few years later, they have become something else. Yes, it’s only Yuhuan. And yes, nothing of great historical importance was captured here.
But it’s also true that a lot of the buildings in these shots – real places where real people lived their real lives – no longer even exist. What was photographed can never be replicated.
If anyone ever wants a record of how this place used to look, this is it.
A permanent record of the impermanence?
One of the three fundamental doctrines in Buddhism is anicca, which means impermanence. It teaches the understanding that all things are in a constant state of flux and change.
Nothing – physical or mental – lasts forever. Indeed, nothing actually remains the same from one moment to the next. And trying to cling to things as if they were permanent leads to suffering. Or dukkha, which is another of those three doctrines.
Solid brick and concrete buildings are not exempt from this. They become rubble. And then they are replaced by glass and steel.
This isn’t a bad thing. We can be sentimental, but impermanence isn’t malicious. Economic needs, population growth, changing infrastructure requirements, and the inevitable passage of time make it inexorable.
Like any time when photographs are shot on film rather than digitally, we have a physical version of these images of impermanence in the form of the negatives. I have them. They’re in a cupboard somewhere.
Exactly where, I’m not sure. But they are somewhere.
If every copy of a digital photograph is deleted, that photograph is gone forever. An actual negative can always be used to reproduce new versions of a shot, though.
And that physically unique, tangible way of storing these images does feel more special. More valuable, somehow. And unless mistreated, they will last for a long time. Longer than me or you.
But that doesn’t mean it’s permanent.
Just like the moments that were captured in these images are gone and later the buildings were too, one day these negatives will also be no more.
That might be when I’m dead and someone is clearing out and throwing away all the crap from my house, or it might simply be when the sun expands and absorbs the Earth.
The acceptance of impermanence
Nothing I’ve written about here is unique to Yuhuan, unique to these photographs, or unique to me.
Urban development happens everywhere. This cycle of destruction and creation – of constant change – is continuous and ubiquitous. Not just in terms of buildings, but in all aspects of life itself.
It’s not something we can fight, but it’s not something we should want to fight, because it’s not about loss and it’s not about attachment. Attachment leads to suffering, remember.
Accepting that things will always change is the freedom from that.
It took me a long time to find something to write about with these photographs, and for me to see the value in them.
Conversely, other photographs of mine that I used to think were good, perhaps I now see as being less good. But we don’t have time to get into Dunning-Kruger here.
It’s all good. It’s just another change for me to accept, and I’m happier doing that than clinging to opinions just because I previously held them.
Nobody wants to suffer. As time marches on, I say bring on the impermanence.
If those thoughts on impermanence piqued your interest for some more essays illustrated with analogue photography, why not have a look at some of these too:
And if you think others will find this post worth a read, help them find it by giving it a share 😀
