SOULS |Dreaming Away Reality

Everyone writes about their dreams in primary school， and fittingly， the compositions are varied： Some want to be scientists or teachers， while others want to explore the moon and Mars. Decades later， grown-up dreams are completely different： houses， cars， designer bags and kids attending international schools. No one can be sure which dreams are out of reach for modern people. In my opinion， dreams are positive energy. It is always worthwhile to work hard chasing a dream. Even failing to reach the goal doesn’t matter much. Dreams cannot wait. I make my backgrounds black-and-white before adding color to the foreground to create a sharp contrast between the colors and plain faces， creating a resonance for each ordinary person.

Presentation of Reality and Dreams

A boy overloaded with assignments dreams of becoming a superhero and flying away from the textbooks and homework. A pottery artisan dreams working on worldfamous paintings based on broken pieces of reality. A migrant construction worker dreams of becoming white-collar and wearing a Western suit. A bicycle repairman dreams of piloting planes. A couple stuck for decades in rural China dreams of having a photo taken in front of the Tian’anmen Rostrum. When creating a photographic series， maintaining the richness and stability of each individual image becomes a daunting task requiring the greatest wisdom and executive force of the photographer. Fan Shunzan has passed such a test. To him， reality cannot be formatted smoothly into dreams which lack a clear connection to reality. Along with the results of collective experience and synchronic culture， this philosophy is the fruit of self-reflection. Fan’s grasp of psychology and perspective of the balance between reality and dreams， and ability to avoid the tedium of reality elevate his work over those who rely primarily on external resources.