Winter Surreal Fantasy by Gao Shang – Photography Inspired by Snow and Memory

I grew up in Harbin, a city in northeastern China, and it has shaped my earliest and deepest understanding of winter.

Whenever snow arrives, I step into it. For me, snow is both a playground and a laboratory. Over the years, I have consistently used art to document my hometown and my favorite season.

Each winter, I begin again—moving through the city to explore, observe, and create. Winter has always carried an almost sacred force in my eyes: solemn, restrained, and yet profoundly captivating. It freezes droplets into ice and blankets the entire city in snow, revealing a different order and texture through silence—something no other season can achieve. What ice and snow leave behind is more than landscape; it is a visual form that feels almost beyond nature itself. In Harbin, ice and snow sculptures are everywhere in winter. To me, like my own works, they are responses to the season—both tribute and reverence.

The greatest challenge of seasonal practice lies not only in inspiration, but also in continuity and extension over time. It asks the artist to return, again and again, to the same environment—finding difference within apparent sameness, building a method, and transforming fleeting seasonal experience into an accumulative visual language. Endurance and persistence therefore become essential disciplines. I have lost count of how many roads I have walked in the snow; perhaps only I know the emotional weight those journeys carry.

As a child, I ran and played in the snow without ever feeling cold. As an adult, snow-covered roads have come to resemble life itself. Many difficulties can only be understood by walking through them in person. I walk tirelessly—not to reach a fixed destination, but to find inner stillness along the way. At the snow-covered edge of the city, direction often blurs. I pause and gaze into an endless distance, where life, time, and the future seem to converge. Yet whenever I feel close to the end, the way ahead turns unclear again. Perhaps I may never arrive at a final destination, but it is on this path that I continue to recognize my direction.

Winter Surreal Fantasy is an ongoing series shaped by these experiences. Every winter, I create new works. Viewers can witness shifts in theme, form, and expression, and see how each stage of my thinking enters the image itself. This is exactly what I hope for: the artist changes, lived experience changes, and ways of seeing change—but the season of snowfall remains. It is still beautiful, still solemn.

For me, a body of work can carry the full weight of emotional devotion. To this day, whenever it snows, I still pick up my camera and walk through Harbin’s streets and alleys, continuing to explore and record. Work grounded in emotion has always been the starting point of my practice. It holds my memory, my time, and my long, intimate connection with this city. For Harbin, I continue to offer the same praise and love—again and again.