September

Ren Hang's September is one installment in a self-published monthly photo-book project the Chinese photographer and poet undertook in 2016, releasing a new booklet each month for a year.

The 32-page softcover collects photographs made in Beijing that September, continuing Ren Hang's spare, deadpan studio style: young bodies arranged in tight, sculptural embraces against plain backdrops, printed without captions or accompanying text. It was distributed independently in a first edition of 100 copies, the way most of his books reached readers before larger publishers took an interest.

Ren Hang (1987-2017) photographed friends and acquaintances nude and semi-nude, treating the body as raw material for tableaux that were frank about desire while sidestepping pornography's conventions. His images circulated online and in self-published books like this one years before institutions such as the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, and the Kansas State University art museum acquired his work, and before Taschen issued a posthumous retrospective monograph in 2020.