Chongqing
Part of "The Sublime" project that explores the overwhelming scale and emotional complexity of 21st-century megacities, focusing on China's rapidly expanding urban landscapes. Characterized by their immense verticality and seemingly endless expansion, these cities stand as monuments to human ambition and technological progress, while simultaneously provoking a profound sense of alienation. Through this series, Ghercă revisits the notion of the sublime, historically associated with the overwhelming power and grandeur of nature, and reinterprets it within the context of contemporary urban environments. In these man-made landscapes, the experience of the sublime emerges from the confrontation between the individual and architectural structures whose scale exceeds ordinary human perception. The photographs explore the tension between awe and unease, between admiration for humanity's capacity to transform its environment and the unsettling realization of one's own insignificance within it. The project consists of three photographs taken in Chongqing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.