Daniel Lee Postaer: No Time for Memory
Daniel Lee Postaer’s book “Mother’s Land” traces the photographer’s outward and inward journey in China, a country his grandparents left behind after an unbearably painful decision.
By Gaia Squarci. Photographs by Daniel Lee Postaer
Daniel Lee Postaer’s images offer a stark, deadpan portrait of a nation accelerating at breakneck speed, like a sports car skidding out of control. He photographs demolitions and constructions, advertisements, and urban greenery that serves little more than decorative purpose. People appear either anonymous or absorbed into the collective. In these scenes, he captures the persistent tension between imposed order and the unstoppable force of entropy.
More than fifty years earlier, his grandparents had fled the communist regime, able to take one daughter with them while leaving another behind. In search of this lost part of his family and reflecting on the life he might have led, Postaer moved to China in the early 2000s and returned several times in the latter half of the 2010s, witnessing firsthand the rapid, often brutal transformations of contemporary life.
The book “Mother’s Land” is published by Deadbeat Club and available at the price of $65.00.
