China has a rich tradition of ghost stories and supernatural beliefs. They tell of ghosts that can shapeshift, transforming into air, darkness, or light. In Ghost Witness , Mårten Lange tells the story of a country hurtling toward the future, with its past following silently behind it, like a ghost in the fog.
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\nDuring his stay in China, Lange visited urban metropolises that have expanded rapidly in recent years, the result of hyper-accelerated growth and development. As he travels through these megacities, Lange explores the boundary between streamlined urban planning and the chaos of everyday life. Ghost Witness focuses on the unique quality of light in the urban environment, where sunlight filters through polluted air and vast arrays of LEDs sparkle in the rain—revealing the world indirectly, like a mirror.
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\nThe images in Ghost Witness inhabit and reproduce the rational and machine logic of the grid to interrogate the overlaps and fissures between architecture, technology, surveillance, and the future. Lange’s precise photographs often depict these fissures: indecipherable codes, broken windows, decay, and entropy in the order of glass and steel. Suspended in a liminal state between constant construction and expansion, Lange questions what it means for humanity to inhabit environments that are planned, designed, and repeated, with little recourse to history, transition, and change.
