http://twoamericansinchina.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/book-about-real-changsha-is-it-really.html

Photos which make the story for me: 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22
I don’t see why the following are included:
1, 4, 8, 10, 11, 16: seem to be there to convey a sense of being close to the lives portrayed, but poor photographically compared to the others which some are really great pics
14: too litteral
21: cliché opposition and too litteral interpretation

As for the comments which say to like the feeling of being there close and others which say that it seems passersby…that seems superfluous critique…passersby look can be so good (Alex Webb), living with the subject can be so good (Bruce Davidson 100East Street)…it just has to be a stream…

the flowing can be beter in this essay with another selection, but close and some really great photos

This does not happen to me when I look at Gilden, Petersen or Pellegrin….

Well….anyways….it’s a fine essay and it’s great that it’s published here on Burn.

Yeah, I agree with your disagreement with John’s critique. At first I was impressed with the artist statement, and loved the photographs, but I couldn’t make the connection. Looking at Vink’s refuses, it became a little clearer. The small-town girl in Beijing, the cheap-thrill bar, the relatively lax security at the university, and the young homosexual writhing in pain/bodily fluids/booze? all helped to make it for me. Rian knows what the norm for the Western media interpretation of China is, I don’t. The other other could probably exist in Beijing, just as the youth of New York City are really no different than the teenagers of Buffalo, or Portland.

By the way, does anyone think number fourteen eerily similar to David’s photo of Andrew Wyeth climbing through the window? ;)

Welcome back. Nice comment, echoes many of my latest thoughts on this essay.

I pretty much agree with everything that has been said above, including the opposing viewpoints expressed by those who vehemently disagree with each other.

Except for John Vink’s statement, which I most definitely do disagree with:

Four, 8, 11, and 14 really do need to be in this essay. When I hit four, I had to stop, to study the face of girl and wonder about her. She seemed like someone I knew, somehow. And 14 probably put more questions into my head than any other single frame in the essay. I wanted to ask the girl in 11 to dance with me, but I probably would have scared her, so it is good that I was not there to ask. Why had the youth fallen? Why? Why? Politics? Alcohol? Meth? Banana peel? I do want to know, but it is okay that Rian does not tell me, but leaves me to wonder and to draw my own non-conclusions.

This is one of those essays that tells me that no matter how different we all are, we are all same. We are all disaffected youth – even those of us who most people do not think of as youth, just because we have white beards or bald heads and grandkids. It doesn’t matter. We are youth and we are disaffected. We will remain disaffected until we are put in our graves or cast to the wind and waters – as Ryan has so well demonstrated in this fine essay.

I am going to go search for a hamburger now. I feel a little guilty about it, because I sure don’t need one and I enjoy the way all those cows in India just hang out and do whatever they want without having to worry about being made into hamburger.

Congratulations, Rian.

Your comment won’t provoke any dissent with me. I have complained here on many occasions about the fact the negative themes you mention seem all too pervasive. Bored, no, weary, yes. It is a sad trend.

Perhaps it reflects the mind-set of young people in these times. Generation Y bother. I feel and see this attitude in my own children and their friends. They are not hopeful for the future, and hear nothing but predictions of doom for the planet and economic chaos. They party with a kind of angry abandon. There is a fatalistic “what’s the use” attitude.

Like you, while I appreciate the story being told here, I’d also love to see more of a balance, as in the dignity and humanity evident in your work.
http://www.burnmagazine.org/essays/2010/05/jamie-maxtone-graham-when-evening-comes/