Series: Humanism in China, Work No. 290
Location: Longmai Hot Spring, Beijing
Medium: Digital giclee print
Edition: 1/10
Signature: Signed by the artist
Cartoon World was photographed during the Chinese New Year of 2003 at Longmai Hot Spring in Beijing. Through the figures in the leisure space, inflatable toys, and artificial scenery, the work presents a humor and irony reminiscent of a cartoon film, while also reflecting the changes in urban life, consumer culture, and popular entertainment in early twenty-first-century China. For the artist, this work also marks a deliberate shift in documentary vision: rather than remaining focused on traditional social subjects such as the elderly, children, remote regions, and poverty, it turns toward the new everyday landscapes and emotional structures emerging in a time of social transformation, revealing the photographer's sharp sensitivity to the lived reality of historical change.
Bao Kun is a photographer, curator, and critic of photographic culture. He formerly served as editor-in-chief of the photography program Instant World at CCTV, and was a specially appointed professor at Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts.