
Hang well hung Chinese photographer Ren lets it all Hang out Ren Hang is an unlikely rebel Slight of build shy by nature prone to fits of depression the 28-year-old Beijing photographer is nonetheless at the forefront of Chinese artists battle for creative freedom Like his champion Ai Weiwei Ren is controversial in his homeland & wildly popular in the rest of the world He says I don&t really view my work as taboo because I don&t think so much in cultural context or political context I don t intentionally push boundaries I just do what I do Why? Because his models friends & increasingly fans are naked often outdoors high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing stacked like building blocks heads wrapped in octopi body cavities sprouting phone cords & flowers whatever enters his mind at the moment He denies his intentions are sexual & there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images the urine the insertions the many many erections In a 2013 interview VICE magazine asked there are a lot of dicks do you just like dicks? Ren responded It s not just dicks I m interested in I like to portray every organ in a fresh vivid & emotional way True though that may be the penises Ren photographs are not just fresh & vivid but unusually large making one wonder just where he meets his friends In the same piece Hang also stated Gender isn t important when I m taking pictures it only matters to me when I m having sex putting him at the forefront of gender inclusiveness Young fans eagerly follow his website Facebook Instagram & Flickr accounts His photographs all produced on film have been the subject of over 20 solo & 70 group shows in his brief five-year career in cities as disparate as Tokyo Athens Paris New York Copenhagen Frankfurt Vienna & yes even Beijing He has self-published eight monographs in tiny print runs that now sell for up to 600 TASCHEN s Ren Hang will be his first international collection covering his entire career with well loved favorites & many never-before-seen photos of men women Beijing & those many many erections Text in English French & German"