HAN Lei

Nostalgia and timelessness are the main characteristics one will find in Han Lei’s works. Primarily a photographer, the artist also works with paintings, sculptures, and installations. Han Lei was one of the first artistic photograph after China’s Cultural Revolution, and has become well-known for his moody, almost haunting photos of landscape, and his portraits reminiscent of 1960’s photography. His black and white work present a strong sense of authorship, a distinctively individual perspective on reality. Han also often casts ordinary looking individual against lush, magnificent landscapes, creating a contrast between the two, as well as inserting anachronistic or out of place objects in some of his pictures.

Born in Kaifeng in 1967, Han Lei graduated from the Central Industrial Art Institute in Beijing in 1989, and has since had his work exposed around the world, in locations such as the Guy and Myriam Ullens Foundation Collection in Switzerland, the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in China, and the Ministry of Culture and Communication in France. The artist currently lives and works in Beijing.