The Internal Crusade

PHOTOGRAPHY

Feb 3

The Internal Crusade is a photographic project by Zexuan Zeng that explores the lasting influence of China’s “Long March” on everyday life and personal identity. Through a two-month journey along the historic route, Zeng documents how political narratives transform individual experiences into collective ideals, using images of people, places, and symbolic landscapes to question how history is constructed and internalised.

Photography Zexuan Zeng

I was born and raised in Ganzhou, Jiangxi, the centre of CSR, where the "Long March" begins. "The Communist Party came out of here" is how they put it. Patriotic education was the content of my schoolbooks, and party emblems with red stars and signs about the "Long March" were on almost every street corner. Growing up, the return of Hong Kong, the Three Gorges Project, Family Planning, and the recent Epidemic, etc. "Long March" is repeatedly used as a keyword. I began to realise that it evolved into a political tool for transforming individual suffering into a necessary sacrifice required by the collectives, with the meaning embedded: "All suffering is a journey, and all journeys must lead to success."

In the summer of 2024, I undertook a two-month journey along the route, documenting the symbolic representations of the "Long March" and the people who live along it. We live in an illusion constructed by false tales, our intentions are revealed as some kind of task, and our experiences are hammered into certain struggles. The image of the god we worship is so blurred as to be weathered by the vulgar soul. This work is in response to these questions.

“In the summer of 2024, I undertook a two-month journey along the route, documenting the symbolic representations of the "Long March" and the people who live along it.”

“The final work comprises a photobook of 110 photographs in sequence. Often presented as photo installations in exhibition contexts, it contains prints of various sizes, contact sheets, negatives, archival photographs, maps, written texts, and archival documents.”

About Zexuan

Zexuan Zeng (*1997) was born in eastern South China and began studying Visual Communication at Shanghai Normal University in 2015. A year later, he started working as a freelance artist and designer. In 2021, he moved to Germany to study at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne, where he completed his Diplom in 2025. Zeng has been actively engaged in photography, writing, video and graphic art.

His artistic interest focuses on the control of emotional flow in photography, especially in relation to the boundaries between documentary and fiction, and the self-referential nature of memory. His work has been exhibited in various countries, including China, Germany, Japan, Turkey and Lithuania.

To see more of his work, visit his website or follow him on Instagram

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The Internal Crusade

“In the summer of 2024, I undertook a two-month journey along the route, documenting the symbolic representations of the "Long March" and the people who live along it.”

“The final work comprises a photobook of 110 photographs in sequence. Often presented as photo installations in exhibition contexts, it contains prints of various sizes, contact sheets, negatives, archival photographs, maps, written texts, and archival documents.”

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