May

Ren Hang's May is one installment in a self-published, month-by-month photobook project the Beijing photographer set for himself in 2016, printing a new book for each month of the year.

Following his stated plan to publish "one photo book every month," each volume gathered pictures made that month in a single city; May collects images shot in Paris, continuing Ren Hang's recurring subjects of nude and semi-nude friends photographed in stark, matter-of-fact settings. The book was issued as a softcover of 28 pages in an edition of 100 copies, printed and distributed by the artist himself outside the conventional publishing system.

Ren Hang (1986–2017) was a self-taught photographer and poet whose direct, often explicit images of the body made him one of the most closely watched, and in China most censored, photographers of his generation. The monthly series that includes May sits alongside his larger monographs, such as the Taschen retrospective, as a record of the fast, prolific, self-published working method that defined his short career.