IN HER DREAMS, Xiaoxiao Xu flies as birds do, riding the wind on outstretched arms, her body light and free. She shares this recurring fantasy with the self-taught aviation enthusiasts who fill her delightful book, Aeronautics in the Backyard.
The eight men she photographed have little to no formal training in aeronautics. They are farmers, barbers, and carpenters with nothing more than a deep love of flight and a knack for cobbling together airplanes and gyrocopters. Most learned what they know from books and magazines, and happily pour time and money into contraptions that may not actually fly. And not one of them minds at all if people find them odd.
"The thing I like the most about the aeronauts is that they dare to be different,” Xu says. “They don’t care about the risks, the chance of failure, or what other think about them. They have a free mind whether or not their planes succeed in lifting off.”
These dedicated aeronauts—or nuts—hunt down parts in aircraft factories, recycling plants and dumps, salvaging joysticks from video games and engines from boats. They toil for months, even years, in their garages and barns, ever mindful that the machines may fail to take off or, worse, fail to stay aloft. Su Guibin suffered a paralyzing injury after colliding with a telephone pole, yet he longs to fly again. "There’s a mountain opposite the front door of my house," he told Xu. "I always dream of flying over the mountain in an aircraft and enjoying the scenery there."
Xu read about the aeronauts three years ago and found their passion so inspiring she wanted to meet them. She lives in the Netherlands, but returned to her home country in 2015 and spent two months tracking them down. Newspaper articles led her to their villages, where she simply knocked on doors until she finally found them. The aeronauts welcomed her into their homes and workshops. She spent as long as a week with each man.
Her photos convey intimacy and a contagious sense of optimism and joy—emotions Xu experienced firsthand when Xu Bin took her on a 15-minute spin in his homemade gyrocopter, the White Dragon. They soared 600 feet over the mountains and rivers. Xu found it loud, windy, and a bit scary. Yet she felt profoundly free. Just as she does in her dreams.
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