No.223

Images courtesy of No.223

The young photographer from China’s Guangdong Province was flattered to have his work compared to Terry Richardson’s; “He’s my idol,” says Lin Zhi Peng, aka No. 223.

But Lin’s elements—the snapshot aesthetic, half-naked bodies, and occasional prurient leer of the camera lens—have less in common with Richardson’s full-frontal wish fulfillment than it does with the stylized documentation of, say, Wolfgang Tillmans or Ryan McGinley. Lin, a former magazine editor at Guangzhou’s entertainment tabloid Modern Weekly, named himself “No. 223” after the lovelorn cop played by Takeshi Kaneshiro in Wong Kar-wai’s cult classic Chungking Express. A voracity for international fashion mags led No. 223 to begin snapping his own portraits, turning a Lomo on his circle of friends. Their friendship and desire to see themselves as a part of a global youth culture allowed Lin to capture images that would have been difficult to imagine coming out of China in the not-too-distant past. “A lot of my friends do creative things, so they are probably more open than most. This allows me to photograph them the way I do. They understand what I’m doing,” says Lin.

But what he is not doing is making a statement for or about the youth of China. “I seldom think about what my photos might give people,” Lin explains. “I just take photos for my own interest.” Lin eventually traded up to a Ricoh GR1 and was given his first shot at fashion photography by Guangzhou-based shoe label United Nude. Lin arrived at the job with no idea what he wanted to shoot, and “let the models lead,” which ended up becoming his modus operandi. “Most photographers have some idea of what they want to shoot, but I have no idea. I follow the models or my friends, then I follow my mind.” One of the images from the United Nude shoot became the cover of 3030: New Photography in China, a book that profiles young, groundbreaking Chinese photographers. The sexually charged but playful image—a young woman in fishnets and lurid pink tights squatting on the street while emitting a mouthful of soymilk—has become something of a calling card for Lin, and that aesthetic is something he hopes to contribute as newly appointed editor-in-chief of Beijing-based culture magazine 1626.

“People [in China today] are more open and more creative,” says Lin. Which is not to say that no one shies away from his work; but No. 223’s got that covered. He’s currently working on the premiere issue of an independent publication called Too Magazine, which should be on newsstands in Asia by fall. “It’s the ideal magazine,” a place where he can publish the pictures deemed too raw by other Chinese publications. So while Lin might not know what he wants to shoot, we know what we want to see—his work in Too.