November

Ren Hang's November is one installment in a yearlong project the Beijing photographer set for himself in 2016: to self-publish a photobook every month, each one a compact record of the people and desire that filled his life that year.

The booklet gathers photographs made in Beijing in November 2016, continuing Ren Hang's practice of photographing friends and lovers nude and unguarded in cramped apartment rooms, on rooftops and around the city, printed without captions or a stated sequence. It was issued as a first edition of one hundred copies, a thirty-two-page softcover booklet following the stripped-down format of the rest of the 2016 series: a single cover photograph, minimal typography, no accompanying text.

Ren Hang (1987-2017) built a body of work around explicit, often startling nudity photographed among friends, circulating first through Chinese social media before it reached galleries and magazines internationally, including Aperture and Foam. He died in February 2017, shortly after completing this monthly series, leaving its twelve booklets among his last self-published projects.