Peng Ke (b.1992, Changsha, China) works with images and writes, while living between Los Angeles and Shanghai. Her experimental practice wanders between images from photography books and personal experiences from reality. Peng Ke’s work explores the experience of living in the fast-developing urban environment, such as small cities in China. One could peek into the colorful corners of these rural cities through the finely tuned captures of Ke’s lenses. Peng Ke’s primary concern is with the relationships between the human condition of urban spaces and the collective experiences of the people there. In her photographs, the tasteful colors, charming forms, strange outlines and popping textures in the indoor and outdoor daily scenes of China among other places in Asia, are vividly and incisively displayed in their very original forms.
Peng Ke graduated in 2015 from Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Photography. She received the Magnum Foundation and ChinaFile's Abigail Cohen fellowship in the following year. She published her photography book “Salt Ponds” in 2018 and was given the New Talent Award at PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai. She has been featured in exhibitions at Guangzhou Airport Biennial, Guangzhou; Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Lianzhou; and Huayu Art Center, Sanya. Recent solo exhibitions include: Peng Ke: Leaving Speed at Lianzhou Museum of Photography, Lianzhou and The Secured, Salt Projects, Beijing. Peng Ke’s work is in the permanent collections of the asymmetry foundation, London; the Macalline Art Center, Beijing; The X Museum, Beijing; and the Chinese University of Hong Kong University Art Centre, Shenzhen.