Old People in Parks《公园老人》is a newsprint photobook celebrating the largest demographic of park-dwellers in China: the elderly. As a frequent patron of parks in China, I became fascinated with the swathes of elderly people there who frequently exercise, socialise and relax in the most peculiar of ways. Whether they are pampering their dogs, sleeping in awkward positions, or singing and dancing the night away, there is seemingly nothing age prevents them from doing. Even in retirement, they remain a testament to one of the hardest working nations on Earth. Conducted over a period of several years, this project is a love letter to all the park-dwelling elderly folk I encountered along the way.
Chinese parks are largely full of elderly people. Some of them huddle in their own communities chatting and playing mahjong, others remain by themselves exercising, resting or watching other people. The more I photographed and got to know them, the more I realised that the reason they visited parks frequently was because they didn’t have much of a social life outside of them. Attending parks became a way for them to spend the day meaningfully. Whether they were exercising for physical health, or socialising and relaxing for pleasure, they were engaging with the local community and environment. Somewhere along the way, I feel we have lost this connection with nature and indeed the real world, particularly my generation.
This project enabled me to appreciate the older generation in ways I hadn’t previously. I think it’s very easy for us to ignore our elders and take them for granted while they are around. But they’re not going to be here forever. Neither are we. They brought us into this world and so we have a duty to treat them with more care and affection. I feel that the reason they visit parks so often is because they want a sense of belonging to a community that appreciates them on a social level rather than just as a dutiful family elder. So documenting them became my way of acknowledging and celebrating their existence in a world that too often ignores them.
The photobook is a tongue-in-cheek anthropological photobook for Westerners curious about elderly social life in China, yet also acts as a guidebook for what the younger Chinese generation can learn from their elders. It is printed on newspaper both because of its frailty in texture and to represent it being the preferred media source of the older generation. It is separated into 3 chapters representing common advice given by the older generation to the younger generation in China:
注意身体 - take care of your body/health
过日子 - pass the day / live your life
好好休息 - rest well / relax
Put simply, there are always things we can learn from the older generation. By observing them in a natural environment, I hope that Old People in Parks《公园老人》can serve as a reminder for us to not only engage with them more and learn from their wisdom, but also to engage with our environment and local communities more.
Newsprint photobook, unbound (28.9 x 38 cm),
32 pages,
29 colour photographs,
Limited to 30 editions,
Self-published,
Printed in UK,
2019.