In 1993, he moved into Beijing’s “East Village”, and began a long-term photographic study on the lives of the young avant-garde artists who were living there. In 1996, he co-founded New Photo magazine with Liu Zheng. In 2000, he started with his wife/ artistic partner inri. In 2006, he established the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing, China with inri.
RongRong currently lives and works in Beijing China and Japan.
RongRong flaunted a wedding gown that symbolizes love and union, posing with a female companion in an abandoned village. This series reflects RongRong’s internal world and emotions at that time, which were profoundly full*of anxiety, loneliness and despair.
RongRong’s East Village is a documentary series capturing avant-garde performances by Zhang Huan, Ma Liuming and Zhu Ming, who lived in the artists’ community, East Village in Beijing in the early 1990s. Between 1992 and 1994, a group of struggling artists and musicians moved to Dashanzhuang Village, unofficially renaming it the Beijing East Village. RongRong moved to the village in 1992 and started shooting documentary of this artists’ community. RongRong’s photographs are beyond documentary, they reflect the start of his life as an independent artist. The “hellish” qualities of the village provided a backdrop for renewed creativity. His introspective photographs of ruins, artist friends, self-portraits and disparate subjects reveal an artist just beginning to analyze, discern and process the transformations in his life and society.
