Ash (New Edition) — Muge
Ash (New Edition) is a photobook by Chinese photographer Muge, published by Zen Foto Gallery and Muge Gallery in September 2019. It is a revised edition of the original 2013 publication and presents Muge's sustained engagement with nature, time, and material form through three sequential sections: Still Life, Shan Shui, and Scenery.
Structure and Concept
The book's organisation is both conceptual and physical. The three sections are stacked on top of each other, forming a staircase-like design — a structure that mirrors the layered, accumulative logic of Muge's images. Each photograph is printed in black and gray and finished with glossy varnish, matte varnish, or special color varnish, selected according to the condition of each individual subject.
The work is grounded in Lao Tze's Theory of Nature. Muge approaches his subjects not as an observer from outside but as someone who belongs to the environment, allowing objects, landscapes, and places the space to weather, grow, decay, and exist on their own terms. Still life objects, mountain forms, water, and stone recur across the three sections as anchors of an extended meditation on cycles of change.
In Muge's own words:
"When I used the large format camera to re-understand my hometown as it is now, I've discovered that all things in the real world derive from our internal desire: the Karma cycle of yearning for nature, destroying nature, and mending nature (...) These images are taken from the understandings gleaned from my daily life, conveying the traces of time and history in nature, and a person's thoughts of the future when faced with reality."
Publication History
The first edition of Ash was published by Zen Foto Gallery in 2013. This new edition, released in September 2019, marks a reissue of that work. Both editions were produced in Japan under the Zen Foto Gallery imprint. The 2019 edition coincided with a period of expanded international exhibition activity for Muge, including his solo presentation at Format Photo Festival.
About Muge
Muge (木格) was born in Chongqing in 1979 and lives and works in Chengdu, China. He is the founder of Muge Gallery. He received the Photographer of the Year Award from PND magazine in 2013 and was selected by IMA Magazine (Japan) as one of the most notable photographers born in the 1970s and 1980s.
Since 2005, his project Go Home has documented the changing landscapes along the route to his hometown in Chongqing, affected by the Three Gorges water conservancy project. His Ash series, begun in 2010, concentrates on three elements — mountain, water, and stone — as sites of temporal observation. His project Behind the Wall (2013–2018) traced 128,658 kilometres along the boundary of the Great Wall, producing a portrait of China through its most symbolic structure.
Muge's work has been exhibited at Fondation Cartier (Paris), Barbican (London), Three Shadows Photography Art Centre (Beijing), and Format Photo Festival (2019). His photographs have appeared in The New York Times and Le Monde. Further titles from Zen Foto Gallery and related Photography & Photobooks are available in the catalogue, including a selection of Japanese Photobooks.
