Photographer Patrizia Bonanzinga is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo esssay. From the project ‘Chine Double’. To see Patrizia’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Chine Double investigates the rapid transformation of Chinese society in the early 2000s, as it shifted from a deeply rooted historical structure toward an accelerated and globalized modernity. The sudden transition—from horizontal urban and social configurations to the vertical expansion of newly emerging skyscrapers—generated a sense of disorientation and instability. The images explore this condition through the duplication of figures within the same frame, suggesting a fragmentation of identity and a tension between past and present. These doubled presences—sometimes subtle, sometimes explicit—question the individual’s place within a changing environment, evoking both the persistence of memory and the pressure of transformation. By combining a documentary approach with digital intervention, the work reflects on the evolving language of photography and its capacity to represent complex social and perceptual shifts.

Photographs taken between 2002 and 2003; project developed in 2007.

Biography

Patrizia Bonanzinga was born in Bolzano in 1954. Trained in mathematics, she developed her photographic practice as a self-taught artist. In 1995, she moved to Beijing, where she began dedicating herself fully to photography, initiating a series of long-term projects focused on China. Her work has been exhibited and published in Italian and international contexts.

Since the early 2000s, with the introduction of digital technology, her practice has developed along two parallel directions: on the one hand, documentary photography rooted in direct observation; on the other, a more experimental approach that explores the relationship between reality and representation through digitally constructed images. Her work investigates themes related to perception, identity, and the transformations of contemporary society, often reflecting on the tension between tradition and modernity. Influenced by her background in mathematics, her photographic language combines analytical structure with an intuitive and exploratory approach.

All images and text © Patrizia Bonanzinga