EGCan you explain a little about the series ‘Chinese Dream’ and how you came to start it?

MRThe project ‘Chinese Dream’ happened in a very spontaneous way while I was travelling in the Yangtze region in 2007. At the time I took these photographs I was living in China but had never been to the cities of Chongqing, Yichang and Wuhan, where I took the photographs. As soon as I arrived in Chongqing I felt attracted by the urban landscape of the city. Chongqing is the biggest municipality of the world with more than 30 million inhabitants. The rapid transformation of the city is so incredible that in the last five years eight bridges, eight highways and eight rail lines have been built. With the construction of The Three Gorges Dam, entire towns and cities have disappeared and new towns are emerging with no clear identity.

I never planed the project but when I came back from the trip and started looking at the negatives I saw there was a strong link between the images that refer to the Yangtze River and the people that seem to me spectators and actors at the same time.

In China people are always forced to move, they do not have any chance to stop or change what’s going on around them. China is changing so fast that I’ve the impression that Chinese people are, in a daily basis, watching their environment transform but at the same time they are caught in the middle of this transformation with not much to do but sit back and watch.

EGDo you feel this project is reflective in a broader sense of China as a whole?

MRYes, I do feel this project is an allegory of what is going in China at the moment. Also the Yangtze River separates north and south and I think the Three Gorges region shows what China is as a whole.

EGAlthough you say that the project wasn’t planned, I suppose these ideas that the images talk of – dislocation, transformation, modernisation – were in your mind whilst you were shooting?

MRI knew I was travelling to the Three Gorges Dam region and knew that the whole region had been transformed with millions of people being displaced and new cities being built from the rubble so I guess I had a preconception of what I was going to find and that is the reason why I also chose to photograph in black and white. I could only see the images in black and white because of the foggy weather. Most of the time I plan my projects but when I started this series I was just looking for places, and when I found an interesting place I would wait for things to happen or would focus on a person that I found interesting.

EGIs there a story behind the image ‘Chongqing, May 2007’? What significance to the body of work does it hold?

MRThe picture was taken from my hotel room in the city of Chongqing and it was one of the first images I took during the journey. For me it is a very important photograph because it could be anyone’s view of Chongqing from their home. For me the image is intriguing and makes the viewer want to go deeper and look behind the curtains.