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Ren Hang, who took his life February 23, 2017, was an unlikely rebel. Slight of build, shy by nature, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing photographer was nonetheless at the forefront of Chinese artists' battle for creative freedom. Like his champion Ai Weiwei, Ren was controversial in his homeland and wildly popular in the rest of the world. His models, friends, and in his last years, fans, are naked, often outdoors, high in the trees or on the terrifyingly vertiginous rooftops of Beijing, stacked like building blocks, heads wrapped in octopi, body cavities sprouting phone cords and flowers, whatever entered his mind at the moment. He denied his intentions were sexual, and there is a clean detachment about even his most extreme images: the urine, the insertions, the many, many erections. In a 2013 interview said "It's not just dicks I?m interested in, I like to portray every organ in a fresh, vivid and emotional way." True though that may be, the penises Ren photographed were not just fresh and vivid, but unusually large. Hang also stated, "Gender isn't important when I'm taking pictures, it only matters to me when I'm having sex," making him a pioneer of gender inclusiveness. Young fans still eagerly flock to his website and Facebook, Instagram, and Flickr accounts. His photographs, all produced on film, have been the subject of over 20 solo and 70 group shows in his brief six-year career. He self-published 16 monographs, in tiny print runs. Taschen's new book covers his entire career, with well-loved favorites and many never-before-seen photos of men, women, Beijing, and those many, many erections. Text in English, French and German. 8.9" x 11.8", 312 pages. New from Taschen.