Red, white and black

Red is an important color in China. According to Wikipedia, in Chinese culture "it carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer." Even with all of these positive inferences, red is also a symbol of blood, death and danger. Red is found all over Shanghai - on the Chinese flag, on shop signs, automobiles and traffic signs, on banners and clothing... if green is the color of the Pacific Northwest, then red is the color of Shanghai (and maybe all of China).
Red is also strongly associated with communism. Russia was the beginning of this association with the red star of communism. Now, China and Vietnam also use the red star to symbolize their tie to communism. While Brooke and I were traveling in SE Asia before coming to China, Brooke had a strong reaction to the red star, particularly in Vietnam, where it is prominently visible all over the country. I also was aware of it, but on a less conscious level. As Brooke stopped to take pictures I became more and more aware of how frequently the red star, and the color red, are used in Vietnam and China.
It wasn't until Shanghai, when I tried to make a photographic composition using Christian's bright red pants, that I remembered about the chromatic filter on my digital camera. Canon has a clever function built into most of their cameras, called "color accent" that allows the user to pick any color in the frame and isolate it by turning all other colors to grayscale. I took a reading off of Christian's pants and snapped a photo one afternoon on the Bund. Reviewing the photo brought to my attention something else that was almost identical in hue to Christian's pants - the red flag of China. For the rest of our stay in Shanghai I left the red filter active on my camera and snapped hundreds of shots - finding bits of red in every nook and corner of Shanghai.
Many of the photos stand on their own, but I am still striving to find a way to use them all as an installation for our final exhibition in the Laverne Krause gallery. One idea suggested to me was to use a bag from from my travels and have the photos spilling out. If we end up using Ryan's idea of the "Chinese street theme", I could post my photos throughout the gallery, as most of them were taken while walking through the streets of Shanghai.