北京黑珍珠

[Běijīng hēi zhēnzhū]

'The Black Pearl of Beijing' is a photography project presented as an urban myth*, shot between 2019 and 2022 in Beijing, China. This series focuses on the ambient spaces, textures and people of a modern city during the time full of paranoia and isolation. As strict lockdowns had swept the country in 2020, the time had almost felt suspended, any future postponed. And when there is no future, people tend to look back in the past and turn to mythology - a proven method to explain any supernatural object or phenomena.

18 images
shot on 35mm b&w film and digital

1.

In 2020, citywide lockdowns were forced throughout China. Suddenly, all the traffic stopped, and people went back to their homes. Beijing became quiet, every gated community got its security guard now, and all the businesses outside were closed, too; even pollution cleared up, and locals finally saw blue skies more often.

2.

People were talking to each other in hushed tones, exchanging conspiracy theories and rumors, avoiding eye contact with strangers. There was a feeling of massive paranoia and anxiety in the air. At the same time, the historical neighborhoods inside the Second Ring Road thrived: people spent a lot of time on the streets, men wearing 'beijing bikinis', playing mahjong outside their houses, stuck in public restrooms with no privacy, smoking 炫赫门 cigarettes, chatting and spitting on the floor while doing 'number 2'.

3.

I heard many urban myths about Beijing around that time: about a haunted house on Chaoyangmen Street, about a Ghost Bus number 375, about the dead souls haunting the construction of the first subway line in the capital, or about the sacking of Old Summer Palace by the Eight-Nation alliance. Inspired by these urban legends, "The Black Pearl of Beijing" is a myth in itself that shows the paranoid state of the modern metropolis from an outsider's point of view.

4.

The photos capture highways and rivers; people passing by the camera, annoyed; objects, and textures of organic or synthetic things that litter historic districts inside the Second Ring Road. The project tells the story of a 5000-year-old city that, despite urbanization challenges, keeps its identity mostly through its people and the stories they pass down from one generation to the next. Whether those legends are true or not is a whole other story.

*THE MYTH OF THE BLACK PEARL

A long time ago, on the banks of the Wuding River, which was later renamed Yongding by the emperor Kangxi, there lived an old and melancholic dragon. This proud creature was sad and lonely, and when it cried, its tears would become the most beautiful pearls...

One night, the dragon saw a moon eclipse and its reflection in the river. Moved by such a beautiful sight, unparalleled by anything it had ever seen, the dragon wept for the last time. A large tear became a glowing black pearl, and as it dropped into the Wuding River, the dragon disappeared, never to return again. Time passed, and all dragons went extinct, but the people who lived around the Wuding River kept finding pearls. Only the infamous black pearl was never recovered, lost temporarily in the rivers and channels of the city that later became known as Beijing.