These photographs, from the project Hinterland, show landscapes from the outskirts of Shanghai — the areas beyond the outer-terminal metro stations.
In each image there is some centrally-placed object, a space being constructed around this, and by drawing an ordinary object out of the landscape and elevating its status compositionally, it is given a significance that in passing perhaps it would not have. As an identified and preserved object, it is enshrined, withdrawn from its mundane original context, and recreated as an object of contemplation. Hence each image presents a site of contemplation.
The series deals with one city, Shanghai, but has relevance to the idea of the city in general — as event, as a complete historical entity with a finite life, as a bounded space. As with any event, its existence is discreet. This does not mean that limits exist in a clear sense. The boundaries of an event shift and break upon examination. This series looks beyond the city at what will be city, the becoming-city, the future-city.
It is a landscape of possibility.
— Peter Dixie, Shanghai, China