Dim Sum

Photo by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

This is the view from an upper-floor, dim sum restaurant in Beijing. Okay, cliche image but I've never made one like this before.

Beijing

Here are some recent images from the trip to Beijing last month.

Photos by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

Trip highlights: Beijing's 798 Art District, an artist community occupying the site of several decommissioned military factories in the Chaoyang District. I saw a great show at 798 Photo Gallery called Family Stuff, by documentary photographers Huang Qinjun and Ma Hongjie. Another highlight: Beijing's hutongs, centuries-old neighborhoods set inside a warren of narrow, dusty alleyways, a kind of parallel universe to the surrounding luxury high-rises and car-choked streets. Beijing's pollution problem was a big negative: read more about it from the Atlantic Monthly's James Fallows here.

Headed to Beijing

Photos by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

I am headed to Beijing in a few days, and bringing along one camera - a Leica M7 - and plenty of rolls of Kodak Portra film. The Leica allows me a spontaneity that I don't typically have with my Hasselblad; there's a formality and deliberativeness that comes with using the Hasselblad. I'm looking forward to shaking things up a little visually, and breaking some of my reflexive patterns of seeing. I imagine I'll be stumbling around Beijing most of the time, jet-lagged and weirdly overwhelmed. The rangefinder might translate that perceptual overload well.

Social Hall

Photo by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

Army/Navy Store

Photos by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

Hookah Lounge

Photo by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

The Mill Village Project

I am in the process of putting "The Mill Village Project: Everyday Life in Pictures" on my website. Finally. It will be an edited version of the show that appeared at the Greensboro Historical Museum in May.

Photos by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

From the "Waiting" Series

This is part of a longer-term project called "Waiting," a series of images that reveal something about the nature and identity of place. Most of the photographs were made in and around the city of Greensboro, North Carolina, the place where I live. Most of the images are of interiors of small, privately-owned businesses found in aging, commercial strip shopping centers: barbershops, ice cream parlors, laundromats. My hope is that, over time, this exploration will yield a kind of narrative, an edited vision about what remains of Greensboro's regional character. I plan to include environmental portraits as well. A more complete version of this series is available here.

Getting Started

Photos by Lisa Scheer, All Rights Reserved

For some time now, I've been interested in creating a new photography blog, a place to catalogue and organize some of the projects I'm working on in Greensboro. I thought this blog would also be a good place to upload some of the photographs I make on the road. So, greetings from the Jersey shore.