microcosm
"The Greeks were philosophically concerned with a rational explanation of everything and saw the repetition of the golden ratio throughout the world and all levels of reality as a step towards this unifying theory. In short, it is the recognition that the same traits appear in entities of many different sizes, from one man to the entire human population.
Today, the concept of microcosm has been dominated by sociology to mean a small group of individuals whose behavior is typical of a larger social body encompassing it. A microcosm can be seen as a special kind of epitome. Conversely, a macrocosm is a social body made of smaller compounds."
In this case we are looking at one of the Chinese microcosms which means that these pictures interpret different layers of life in Chinese mega cities down to single individuals representing life inside residential environments. Today, most people in China live in cities...cities which have been constructed and developed in the past ten to twenty years and which are mostly unknown by western industrial countries. While the city center is changing fast the suburbs of all these urban areas are changing and growing even faster. This is the place where most of the arriving new residents are going to stay and try to make a living.
Huge development areas with lots of massive residential "towers" and enormous separated complexes of buildings, at the scale of a district, represent the current face and (sometimes) surreal scenery of Chinese housing at the edge of a city. On the other hand this also represents the circumstances of the majority of 1,3 Billion citizens of China which is the macrocosm in this context.
© Christopher Domakis
