The ICRP of Meghan Keeler

Abstract

Coming back to Beijing on the fourth of January I still had no real idea what to expect of my internship. I knew I would be working with an artist, at least that's what his card says, by the name of Wang Jinsong. I knew he did a photographic exhibition involving the character chai. And I knew, from what I'd seen thus far, his work is western-influenced and, typically, interesting if not good. Unfortunately I mostly knew this because I had wanted to do some kind of photographic "something" involving chai and I decided to work with Wang Jinsong mostly because he'd beaten me to the punch. I suppose that's fair, first dibs probably should go to citizens or persons fluent in the language. It's probably also worth mentioning that my thoughts about the character chai and would it could represent artistically has gone about as far as "hehe, cool." Wang Jinsong, on the other hand, had an idea for how he planned to use his photographs of chai in order to express something about modernization that goes beyond the picture of the icon.