Series description
This series depicts childhood memories and historic events from the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the photographer was fascinated by all things military. Cold War rumours published in military magazines; Second World War artefacts left behind by the Japanese military; his father’s ability to identify the sound of different types of aircraft; playing with his friends in decommissioned military planes – these were all important parts of Li Sun’s childhood. They became even more valuable to him in retrospect, more than 20 years later, when he started to create temporary sculptures inspired by the model kits of his childhood, exploring the connection between history, memory and reproduction.
Biography
Born in 1987, Li Sun is an artist from Beijing, China. He graduated from New York Film Academy with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2015. Li mainly focuses on photography. At present, he lives and works in Beijing.
Abu Dhabi
The photographer used to own a pile of export catalogues of military weapons, illustrated with descriptions in English and Arabic. These found catalogues became ‘picture books’ that he used to flip through at home alone. For this photograph, he researched models of missile launchers that matched the time period and reconstructed them in a similar fashion to an old, memorised illustration.
© Li Sun, China Mainland, Shortlist, Professional competition, Still Life, 2025 Sony World Photography Awards
Bunker
The title refers to the numerous aircraft shelters built by the Japanese military near present-day Nanyuan Airport in Beijing. Li Sun measured the sizes of the shelters and guessed what types of planes might have been housed in them, arranging the plastic models of these airplanes in the relative positions of the bunkers to construct this piece.
© Li Sun, China Mainland, Shortlist, Professional competition, Still Life, 2025 Sony World Photography Awards
Horn
Li Sun’s apartment was located near a military airfield, so planes carrying out air force missions virtually took off from the family’s apartment. His father could tell the type of plane by the sound of its engine. For this photograph, Li Sun hung some models of military aircraft that his father had taught him to recognise and allowed their shadows to fall.
© Li Sun, China Mainland, Shortlist, Professional competition, Still Life, 2025 Sony World Photography Awards
Karafuto
These crumbling constructions were built using model kits of the main US and Soviet aircraft from the Cold War. The story was about the air disaster of Korean Air Flight 007, which crashed in the open sea in the early morning hours of 1 September 1983 .
© Li Sun, China Mainland, Shortlist, Professional competition, Still Life, 2025 Sony World Photography Awards