Ren Hang’s work is the synonym of avant-garde sensuality, and we are dedicating him today’s post, following his unexpected passing on February 24th 2017.
Ren Hang was a 29 year old Chinese photographer based in Beijing whose work focused on joyously featuring sexuality using the human body as a structural piece.
He started in photography shooting whatever he saw with a cheap film camera he bought for 16 €, but his interest for capturing nudes started in college: “When I lived in the student dorm, what I saw most was my roomie’s naked body.” His subjects were usually friends, and people he knew for some time, because, as he stated, strangers made him uncomfortable.
Although he was born and raised in China, he was arrested many times in his country because of his sexually explicit photographies, and due to the countries’ censorship law, his work never received the recognition it deserved there.
What we admire the most about his photographs, besides the fact that they’re bold, fearless and incredibly sexy (and sexual), is the fact that there is no hierarchy between the genders: he captured them both in the same way, showing that we all have the same desires, ambitions, and that male and women can be sexual and not sexualized.
Ren Hang battled against depression throughout his life, expressing it many times in the form of poetry, and sadly it was the reason that took his life.
His work is available on his website.
