This series explores the subtle entanglement between artificially constructed scenic landscapes and the deeply rooted Chinese emotional attachment to nature—what is often referred to as shanshui sentiment. The images were captured in Baligou, Huixian, Xinxiang, Henan Province, China.
In today’s society, man-made landscapes have become not only an inevitable outcome of urban expansion, but also a vital arena for contemporary spiritual longing and emotional projection. These fabricated environments serve, in many ways, the classical function of «borrowing scenery to express feeling» (jie jing shu qing), and sometimes their curated aesthetic experiences rival those of untouched natural scenes.
Yet beneath this seemingly harmonious coexistence lies a complex cultural and aesthetic tension. The landscapes often graft onto themselves an empty, symbolic version of traditional landscape ideology—what once emerged from genuine reverence for nature is increasingly reduced to a surface-level, easily consumable emotional experience under the pressures of modern speed and commercial desire.
These landscapes become like temporary spiritual towers erected on barren ground: imitating nature, echoing its rhythms, yet ultimately dominating the visual order. In this sense, they enact a silent disciplining of contemporary aesthetic perception—a shift that calls into question the evolving relationship between humans and landscape.
