Research and Other Investigations from China

Investigating Beijing’s Underbelly for Travel & Leisure

Clipping from "Beijing 24/7" for Travel & Leisure

Bejing is a notoriously hard city to pin down. It takes years of patient observation and interaction to start exposing the multifaceted nature of China’s capital. I can’t even begin to describe the number of parachute journalists who dropped in for a few days and unsuccessfully tried to capture the essence of the city. It was therefore a great pleasure to provide the photography for the one writer who got closest, Gary Shtenyngart. The satirical novelist spent a week or so in Beijing and left with quite a grasp of the many paradoxes the city has to offer. Maybe it came from his deadpan Russian roots, but he astutely picked apart the absurdities that make the city such a beguiling place to live. Humor is often the only way to get to the heart of the beast. Read the article here. Well done, sir, well done.

Clipping from "Beijing 24/7" for Travel & Leisure

Clipping from "Beijing 24/7" for Travel & Leisure

Clipping from "Beijing 24/7" for Travel & Leisure

Fat Baby graces the cover of The New Republic for the Chongqing Dockers

Fat Baby graces the cover The New Republic for the Chongqing Dockers

I am very excited to announce that my portrait of Fat Baby is currently gracing the cover of The New Republic. Last fall I traveled down to Chongqing to photograph what would become the turning point in the season for the Dockers, the city’s first American football team. Fat Baby was one of the many characters involved in the ups and downs of this amazing venture. I usually provide a short summary of the articles I shoot, but this one needs to be read in its entirety. Chris Beam does an amazing job capturing the absurdities and struggles of this band of warriors. It’s an excellent look into some of the mutating facets of contemporary Chinese culture. It’s so good, in fact, that Sony Pictures bought the movie rights to the story. Maybe you will see Fat Baby on the big screen one day. Definitely a sports star for the ages.

Matthew Niederhauser photographs the Chongqing Dockers for The New Republic

Matthew Niederhauser photographs the Chongqing Dockers for The New Republic

Matthew Niederhauser photographs the Chongqing Dockers for The New Republic

Matthew Niederhauser photographs the Chongqing Dockers for The New Republic

Counterfeit Paradises in the Media

Counterfeit Paradises is seeing a lot of play this year. So far it was featured in Bloomberg Businessweek in the United States, Wired in the United Kingdom, and Sonntagsblick Magazine in Switzerland. A big Stern feature will also show up in Germany sometime in the coming months. More importantly, I am in the midst of speaking to a number of publishers about a Counterfeit Paradises book. Hopefully more details will become apparent in the near future. Otherwise, check out an updated description of the project as well as an expanded cut here.

Given the choice between a good hell and a counterfeit paradise, what will people choose? Whatever you say, many people will believe that a counterfeit paradise has got to be better than a good hell. Though at first they recognize that the paradise is bogus, they either don’t dare or wish to expose it as such. As time passes, they forget that it’s not real and actually begin to defend it, insisting that it’s the only paradise in existence.” – Chan Koonchung

China’s grand development plan continues to grow at an unrelenting pace. It is undoubtedly the largest infrastructure buildout in the history of mankind. However, too much is at stake to slow down such a gargantuan economic force, even as cracks appear in it across the country. Pollution, relentless traffic, and corruption are now a daily part of urban life. Counterfeit Paradises explores these cracks through the “harmonious” cities and sites of leisure emerging throughout China. Such locations are shaping a greater architecture of materialism that gives rise to unsustainable consumer patterns. A billion more people in China cannot live in the same manner as urbanites in American and Europe. The pooled natural resources of the planet could not bear it. For now the Chinese nouveau riche partake in an imagined space of contentment even as reassuring political rhetoric regarding the trappings of their “modern” lifestyles wears thin. This fantasy plays out in many spaces: newfangled municipal districts, communist heritage sites, amusement parks, cultural institutions, and themed luxury residential developments. They all serve to prop up a consumer paradigm that is increasingly important to the short-term economic growth of China but detrimental to its long-term sustainability. The hopes and dreams of many are woven into such spurious ventures, even if in practice many of them remain underused. These fanciful but alienating terrains are the Counterfeit Paradises of China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Clippings from the Counterfeit Paradises project investigating urban development and leisure habits in China.

Portraits of Gigi Chao, Asia’s Most Famous Lesbian, for The Times

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong for The Times weekend magazine.

This was definitely one of the more interesting assignments to come my way. The story of Gigi Chao and her father, Cecil, who put up a large bounty (HK$500 million) to anyone who could wed and bed his lesbian daughter, went viral on the Internet late last year. As if her life weren’t storied enough growing up amongst the mansions, helicopters, and yachts of Hong Kong’s elite, she was suddenly the most famous lesbian in Asia and object of unwanted desire from a host of suitors around the world. My father in West Virginia even saw the story and sent me an email suggesting I take a trip from Beijing down to Hong Kong to see what was happening. Eight months later I was boarding a plane to try my luck… at taking her portrait for The Times. Fortunately she was gregarious and no stranger to the camera having already appeared in a host of magazines including a recent cover for Hong Kong Tatler. The shoot itself went very smoothly but was not the time or place to suggest absconding to Las Vegas to tie the knot. Gigi is already happily married to her partner, Sean, another scion of a wealthy Hong Kong family. The incident is far from over, though. It seems Sacha Baron Cohen caught onto the story and is preparing to film a parody of sorts. The absurdity of the entire situation is about to be severely compounded.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Gigi Chao poses in a studio in Hong Kong.

Girls’ Generation K-Pop Factory Girls for The New Yorker

Clipping from The New Yorker's Factory Girls article featuring Girls' Generation.

I am going to be playing catch up over the next month or two – lots of new work and clippings to share. These images are from an awesome article for The New Yorker delving into Korean pop music (aka K-pop). I flew down to Jakarta to witness a massive stadium concert featuring some of the biggest names in K-pop from S.M. Entertainment and take portraits of Girls’ Generation. The nine member group consists of Taeyeon, Jessica, Sunny, Tiffany, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sooyoung, Yoona and Seohyun. It was easily one of my most stressful photographic experiences. The management closely grooms these girls for years and try to control their media presence very closely. They were suspicious of what The New Yorker would detail and didn’t provide me with any information on how to get into the stadium properly. I was lucky enough to find a sympathetic security guard who let me into the backstage area where I only had fifteen minutes to set up all my lighting gear and another fifteen minutes with Girls’ Generation to take the actual photographs. Luckily they had some nice pink satin backdrops that worked well with my ring flash. Girls’ Generation knew how to pose for the camera as well, of course. The New Yorker Photo Booth blog interviewed me about the shoot here. These are some of the hottest up-and-coming stars in K-pop.

Girls' Generation perform live in a Jakarta stadium for an S.M. Entertainment showcase of Korean pop.

Girls' Generation pose before their big stadium show in Jakarta

“The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei” Wins John Kobal Award at National Portrait Gallery

Ai Weiwei poses in front of his studio with one of his newfound cats.

I am very pleased to announce that I was given the John Kobal New Work Award in affiliation with the 2012 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portraiture Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London this November. It was quite a whirlwind of an evening, and I must say I was completely honored to be awarded amongst all the great work that also hangs in the 2012 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portraiture Prize exhibition. I can’t encourage people enough to go visit and see for themselves. It will be hanging in the National Portrait Gallery until February 17, 2013. The portrait of Ai Weiwei was originally commissioned for Foreign Policy’s 2011 edition of the Top 100 Global Thinkers issue. It has since gone on to appear on the cover of the Telegraph’s Seven Magazine as well as in other media outlets. Check out the installation shots below. It stands right at the entrance of the exhibition. Critics seem to dig it so far. Lastly, here is the text from the accompanying catalog:

“Matthew Niederhauser’s fascination with China was forged during his high-school studies in Mandarin, and the American photographer now lives in Beijing, where he documents aspects of Chinese life for a range of publications including The New Yorker and Time. Artist and political activist Ai Weiwei, the subject of Niederhauser’s entry, has crossed those lines on many occasions. At the time the portrait was taken, as a commission for Foreign Policy magazine, Ai was being held under virtual house arrest and forbidden to leave China following his three-month detention a year earlier. Wanting to capture Ai with one of the many cats that hang around his compound, Niederhauser persuaded him to pose with a ginger stray, its colouring setting off the teal-blue gates of the studio. ‘There was a tense moment when I didn’t think the cat was going to cooperate, but it finally glanced back, allowing me to get a few frames with everything melding together.’

All selected photographers under the age of 30 were eligible for the first John Kobal New Work Award. The winning photographer receives a cash prize of £4,000 and a commission from the Gallery to photograph a sitter connected with the UK film industry. The Award was judged by Simon Crocker, Chairman of the John Kobal Foundation, and writer and journalist Liz Jobey, a Trustee of the John Kobal Foundation.”

National Portrait Gallery 2012 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portraiture Prize installation of The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei

Cover clipping of the Telegraph Seven Magazine's The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei

Interior clipping of the Telegraph Seven Magazine's The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei