Killing Time: The Landscape of Leisure
The city of Dalian in North East China is a city stuck between vast natural beauty and the ever-present human condition of commercialising nature, resulting in an often-bizarre landscape that aptly represents China?s rapid surge for progress. The development of theme parks alongside this natural beauty perfectly illustrates the global culture of advertising tourism to beautiful unspoilt areas that in reality come under threat through the increased visitation and development of the landscape. Much like in the 1950s in which we saw the sprawl of the growing middle classes in the West, China is now experiencing the this same phenomenon and where better to witness it than through how a culture spends it?s leisure time?
Whilst on the one hand this body of work challenges our preconceptions of the visual aesthetic of modern day China, the images also highlight global trend of the subtle destruction of nature for reasons mostly linked to financial profit. There has been much press on China?s environmental record whilst avoiding issues of domestic destruction of nature in the West. By making this series of images almost ambiguous as to location the goal is for Western audiences to question their own role in the perversion of nature.
Dave Wyatt
b. Bristol, 1979
Dave Wyatt is a Documentary Photographer from the UK whose images seek to explore the relationship people have with the environment. The goal of Dave?s work is not to pass judgment as much as to raise questions about the nature of this delicate relationship.
Dave gained his MA in International Photojournalism, Documentary Photography and Travel Photography from the University of Bolton studying on the Dalian, China cohort, and his BA degree from the renowned school of Documentary in Newport, South Wales. His work has been exhibited in both national and international galleries, museums and festivals including The National Gallery in Pristina, Kosovo, the Chobi Mela IV festival in Bangladesh, the Ian Parry Awards 2006 exhibition in London, the Riverfront Centre in Newport, South Wales and The Royal West of England Academy, Bristol. He has also had images published in a variety of books and magazines editorially and accepts commercial assignments on a regular basis.
