New Love

New Love is Ren Hang's first official US monograph, built from photographs he made during his first visit to New York in early 2015. Session Press published it as a hardcover edition of 500, timed to an exhibition of the same title at Matchbaco Gallery in Tokyo, June 19 through July 25, 2015.

The book collects casual pictures of friends in parks, cafes, streets, and apartments across Brooklyn and Manhattan, mixed with the frank nude photographs that were making Hang's name internationally even as his work drew routine censorship at home in China. Working outside Beijing loosened the pictures: the diaristic shots and the nudes share the same unguarded, curious energy. Studio Lin in New York designed the book; it was printed by die Keure in Belgium and edited with Huang Jiaqi.

New Love set the template Hang would follow through the rest of his short career, pairing each new city with a small, quickly produced book. He died in February 2017 at 29, and this and its sequel, Athens Love (2016), remain central to how his work is read today.