Huang Jiaqi

Ren Hang's Huang Jiaqi is a self-published record of a Berlin encounter with his partner, a work as intimate as it is unrepeatable.

The 32-page hardcover, produced in Beijing and issued with an accompanying poster, gathers photographs Ren Hang made of Huang Jiaqi during their time together, continuing the direct, unguarded nude portraiture that defined his practice. Huang, later credited alongside Ren Hang as image editor on the book New Love, appears here as both subject and collaborator, and the book was never reprinted.

Ren Hang (1987–2017) photographed friends and lovers nude against ordinary domestic backdrops, work that drew repeated police scrutiny in China for its casual defiance of official modesty codes. Huang Jiaqi's portrait from this book was later chosen for the cover of Ren Hang's posthumous Taschen retrospective, and Huang has since continued working as a photographer in his own right.