Thanks to Beaugeste Photo Gallery, Shanghai, Susanna Pozzoli had the opportunity to visit and work in the Yunnan province, China. gallery director, Jean Loh, with WPP’s prized photographer Wang Gang, developed a residency project for international photographers based in Lijiang.
With the help of Wang Gang and Hanne Line, Chinese speaking European guide, Pozzoli discovered different places and shared some private moments in the wide and wild area of Yunnan province. The region is famous for incredible landscapes and astonishing natural beauty, ancient temples and the city of Lijiang, which is a UNESCO site and a major touristic center in China, welcoming thousands of people every year. With this residency project for professional photographers, Beaugeste wants to give a non - touistic view on theses sites. Every photographer invited works with his/her own methods and style, being free to propose his/her vision on the places visited.
Lijiang is located in the northwestern portion of Yunnan and borders Sichuan. It is in a region where the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau converge: montains, rivers, paths go all the way to Tibet.
Susanna Pozzoli’s project is a vivid diary of encounters, divided in small series: a wedding; the ceremony that introduces a new born baby to the community after 30 days of private life with his/her mother and family; a Chinese Buddhist temple on the way to Tibet; the encounter to a well-known natural medicine doctor in his home - garden - laboratory; the lake landscape; the countryside yards in ancient villages; a earthenware factory for tiles and black cats (traditionally offered for good luck) with only women workers; a covered market nest to Lijiang; the shooting with a very well-know “shaman master” who posed in front of a village school; an old lady on the lake trying to sell apples on a deserted field; a female farmer in a yard with an ancient husker for cobs.