No.223’s Photographic Expression and the Transnational Trajectories of “I-Photography” in 2000s China
RongRong&inri/text
Since the late 1970s, a form of artistic photographic expression began to emerge in China that took the personal perspective as its starting point while also directing attention toward relationships with others and with society. In the early 1980s, a photographic “New Wave” took shape, and by the late 1980s through the 1990s, the medium had evolved toward more experimental artistic forms. Young photographers increasingly distanced themselves from institutional and mainstream frameworks, organizing independent artistic projects and exhibitions. Entering the 2000s, as contemporary art rapidly internationalized, photography also entered a new phase of development.
No.223 (Lin Zhipeng), born in Shantou, Guangdong Province, has pursued a personal and experimental approach since 2003. Alongside his work in media coverage, he made use of China’s relatively open internet environment at the time to explore a hybrid form combining text and image. His sustained photographic documentation of the body, emotion, and intimate relationships within urban life was accompanied by self-edited and self-published zines, which resonated with his contemporaries and inspired others to take up photography. This practice has come to be recognized as one of the defining developments in Chinese photographic expression since the 2000s.
No.223’s photography often evokes imagery of youthful collectives or coming-of-age scenes, yet at its core is a persistent commitment to “recording everyday landscapes” and “gazing at relationships,” sustained over more than two decades. His subjects are primarily close friends and acquaintances. Through recurring depictions of bodies, gazes, personal objects, and gestures from daily life, his photographs quietly—yet intensely—capture the physical and emotional nuances of human relationships. This orientation resonates with the lineage of so-called “I-Photography” in Japan. During the 1970s and 1980s, photographers such as Masahisa Fukase, Nobuyoshi Araki, and Daido Moriyama became known for their direct and revealing expressions of inner emotions, sexuality, and familial themes. In contrast, post-1990s Japanese photography gradually shifted its focus away from the “exposure of the self” or documentary exactitude, and toward themes such as “interpersonal relationships,” “co-presence,” and a “sense of flowing time.”¹
This shift was supported by programs such as New Cosmos of Photography and Parco Urbanart, as well as by Japan’s distinctive culture of photo magazines and photobooks. These platforms went beyond merely discovering emerging talent; they functioned as bearers of the social and cultural expectation for “new forms of personal expression = contemporary reality,” and were closely intertwined with the shifting sensibilities of the time. Under such institutional support, photography moved away from the objectivity of “reportage” or “documentation” and came to be valued as a contemporary mode of expression capable of engaging with softer, more ambiguous realms―such as “the self and the other,” “relationality and perception,” and “the body and time.”²
In contrast, No.223’s photographic practice emerged independently in early 2000s China, where no such institutional infrastructure or programs existed. Using fashion magazines, personal blogs, and zines as autonomous tools, his practice developed entirely through self-initiated effort. His work arose under conditions different from Japan’s institutional support system, incorporating physical intimacy and contact without rendering them sentimental or consumable. Working in analog film, he meticulously documents the changes and accumulations that mark human relationships. His perspective is deeply entwined with the transformations of urban space and the shifting social sensibilities of China. In an urban life increasingly defined by anonymity, his practice attempts to preserve the contours of the body and of emotion. His photographs evoke what might be called “landscapes of relationships”―poetic visual impressions that do not blur interpersonal connection, but rather make tangible the physical and emotional presence of individual subjects.
In a contemporary moment when visual information is rapidly consumed through social media and other screen-based platforms, No.223’s works attentively capture delicate elements such as human touch, the texture of air, and moments of silence. His photographic stance aims to document and preserve these relationships in a form resistant to consumption. In an age when both relationality and bodily perception are increasingly vague, his expression seeks to reclaim visual intensity. It may be seen as a unique perspective rooted in China’s urban culture and social reality. His ongoing practice marks one of the important directions in Chinese photography since the 2000s, positioning itself as a contemporary attempt to depict and sustain human relationality through the medium of photography.