These images are all from Chinese artist Liu Bolin’s series “Hiding in the City,” a performative photography project. The artist, and often subject, uses paint to camouflage himself and disappear into the chosen surrounding environment: graffiti walls, imperial buildings, collapsed or crumbling structures, heavy machinery, and deserted monuments have all been used as backdrops. This state of “disappearing” plays with the standard relationship between subject and environment, figure and ground, which historically and traditionally are distinctly separate from each other. In Bolin’s work the figure is not lost to the space, rather encroached upon by it. Through hiding the subjective spirit of the figure, the individual effectively becomes tragic, and the content, the effect of the work becomes a weighty reflection on the quality and condition of life in Bolin’s native country, China.