Robert Schlatter graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Cooper Union School of Art in New York City, where he was the assistant of photographer, Irving Penn. Schlatter started his career in Paris, working on in-house projects for Hermès and Christian Dior as well as editorial fashion and portrait assignments for various French, German and Swiss magazines. An ad campaign for Levi’s brought him to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is living today. He now splits his time as a commercial/editorial portrait and still life photographer between California and New York. His first Monograph “Ghost Man” is a return to his roots in documentary photography.
About the book:
“Ghost Man” documents Robert Schlatter’s journey across China’s Easter Seaboard between 1999 and 2001. It had been 20 years since Deng Xiaoping initiated open market reforms, vastly transforming the lives of more than a billion people in less than a generation. This was a time of transition. The “old” China was still present in the urban landscape and the minds of its people, but the “new” China spread its wings rapidly, erasing everything in its path. The creed of communism gave way to the creed of consumerism.
Most people Schlatter met on his journey seemed to look optimistically towards the future, enjoying their new, more affluent lives, however some were skeptical of the influence of gwei-lo culture, and were worried that the “ghosts of the past” would eventually return. Now, another 20 years later, the artist has curated the photographs from those journeys into a book.
Book title: Ghost Man
Photographer: Robert Schlatter
Publisher: Self Published
28 × 33 cm, 128 pages
2021
English
USD 79.00
