Shao Yuan, Peking University, Beijing, China
Lois Conner American
Not on view
Since the mid-1980s, the photographer Lois Conner has been working in China, developing a particular fascination with the lotus. This photograph shows a lotus pond in Shao Yuan, an early seventeenth-century garden whose landscaping survives today as part of the campus of Peking University. Both Conner’s subject matter and her vertical composition, created by using a “banquet format” camera lens, evoke traditional Chinese hanging-scroll depictions of the subject. By pointing her camera downward so that the flowers in the foreground completely fill the picture frame—eliminating a horizon line—Conner’s image recalls Chinese examples that omit any view into the distance.
