A photo from Hou Shuai's The Second World. [Photo provided by cpanet.org.cn]

Hou Shuai's Second World recalls the past, confronts the present, uses post-production to create surreal viewpoints. It also asks rhetorical questions of history, with a political narration dominated by personal experience.

Hou's work has much to do with his past experience. In his primary years when Hou started to learn photography, he did some experimental work on poetic surreal shooting. During that time, Hou also immersed himself in silver halide photography and tried to make photos with traditional photographic features. He endeavored to make these works acceptable in the context of photography. Recently, he has paid more attention to challenges from the personalized historical and political features of the pictures. He puts fictional elements in a special space, presenting a nostalgic black-and-white surreal world for the onlookers.