"Phantom Shanghai"
Jan. 3rd, 2008 05:58 pmThe opening photo, in which bits and pieces of red paper from firecrackers litter the stone steps, really says everything. Through Greg Girard's photos, I caught glimpse of a house that went down a long time ago, the house I grew up in.
William Gibson: Phantom Shanghai is the actual vanishing, the hideous 21st-century urban hat trick itself.
Leo Rubinfien: Though (the alleyways of Shanghai) were Chinese (what else could they be?), they would have seemed inauthentic in their time.
__ a terrible sentimentalist
__ infinite dishevelment was at the heart of the wonder of the old alleys
__ a kind of collage with a meaning that was cryptic but a logic that was inarguable
__ In any event, I will lament it until I forget it