<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;UTF-8">
<title>MCLC: The new world of Chinese photography</title>
</head>
<body leftmargin="0" marginwidth="0" topmargin="0" marginheight="0" offset="0" style="margin: 0;padding: 0;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;height: 100% !important;width: 100% !important;">
<div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Helvetica', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif !important;">
<table style="width: 100%;" bgcolor="#E7E7E7">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;" bgcolor="#E7E7E7">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td><a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc"><img style="max-width:200px;" src=""></a></td>
<td align="right">
<h6><a style="text-decoration:none !important; margin: 0!important; padding:0;font-weight: 900; font-size: 14px; text-transform: uppercase; color: #002BFF !important;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc">MCLC LIST</a></h6>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div >
<h3 style="margin-top:0;"><a style="font-weight: 500; font-size: 21px;line-height: 30px; margin-top:25px; margin-bottom: 10px;" href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc/2016/09/19/the-new-world-of-chinese-photography/" target="_blank">The new world of Chinese photography</a></h3>
<div style="margin:1em 0;font-size: 13px;color:#000 !important;line-height: 23px;">
<p>Source: CNN (9/12/16)<br />
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/11/arts/new-world-of-chinese-photography/index.html">From Tiananmen to THIS: The new world of Chinese photography</a><br />
By Wilfred Chan, for CNN</p>
<div class="pg-rail-short__head pg-above-rail">
<section id="large-media" class="zn zn-large-media zn-body zn--idx-0 zn-has-one-container" data-eq-pts="xsmall: 0, medium: 460, large: 780, full16x9: 1100" data-vr-zone="zone-0-0" data-zone-label="headerMedia" data-containers="1" data-zn-id="large-media" data-eq-state="xsmall medium large full16x9">
<div class="l-container">
<div class="el__gallery el__gallery--fullwidth js__leafmedia--gallery">
<div class="el-carousel__wrapper">
<div class="js-owl-carousel owl-carousel carousel--full body owl-loaded owl-drag" data-galleryname="Photography without memory: The new world of Chinese photography" data-cut-format="4:3" data-is-gallery="true" data-slide-count="10">
<div class="owl-stage-outer owl-height">
<div class="owl-stage">
<div class="owl-item active">
<div data-slidename="Photography without memory: The new world of Chinese photography" data-analytics="_body_image">
<div class="el__resize">
<div class="el__position media js-gallery-aspect-ratio-wrapper">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</section>
</div>
<div class="pg-rail-short__wrapper pg-rail--right">
<div class="pg-rail-short__body pg-side-of-rail">
<section id="body-text" class="zn zn-body-text zn-body zn--idx-0 zn-has-multiple-containers zn-has-55-containers" data-eq-pts="xsmall: 0, medium: 460, large: 780, full16x9: 1100" data-vr-zone="zone-1-0" data-zone-label="bodyText" data-containers="55" data-zn-id="body-text" data-eq-state="xsmall medium large">
<div class="l-container">
<div class="el__leafmedia el__leafmedia--sourced-paragraph">
<p class="zn-body__paragraph"><cite class="el-editorial-source">Shanghai, China (CNN)</cite>Liu Heung Shing knows how to be at the right place at the right time. In 1989, that was Tiananmen.</p>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Then a photographer for AP, he remembers how other journalists went home as the protests dragged on. "I told them not to leave," he says. "They didn't listen."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Days later, the tanks rolled in — and Liu became one of a few to document the Tiananmen Square massacre, creating images that stunned the world.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Now 65, he's back in China for very different opportunity: An exploding interest in a new wave of contemporary Chinese photography that rides at the art world's cutting edge, while leaving out the politics of the past.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--fullwidth">
<div class="el__image--fullwidth js__image--fullwidth">
</div>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">
<h3>The biggest show in town</h3>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__read-all">
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Liu, the founder of the new Shanghai Center of Photography (SCoP), is one of the featured guests at PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, in its third year already one of China's largest international art fairs. The glitzy gathering attracts top galleries, collectors, and VIPs. Even the city's vice-mayor is there, posing with Liu for a photo-op.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Like many things in China, photography has a long history with the Communist Party, which dominated the country's image production for decades. Only in the 80s did a counternarrative emerge, in the form of politically charged art and documentary photography.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--fullwidth">
<div class="el__image--fullwidth js__image--fullwidth">
</div>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">That was yesterday. Now, as China strives for recognition on the international cultural stage, its contemporary photography has mirrored global trends, focusing less on social reality and more on form.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Gone are the black and white, bleeding heart photographs of Liu's generation. What's hot are mixed media works that play with the physical contortion and transformation of images, approaching pure aesthetic.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">
<h3>'A new art form'</h3>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Championing this movement is PHOTOFAIRS' artistic director Alexander Montague-Sparey. "Photography needs to move away from memory to more abstract practices," he says. "Photography is becoming like painting — we're almost creating a new art form."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">The British director sees Chinese photo artists as new global trendsetters. "They generally have a maverick approach to the medium," he tells me. "They're not trying to fit in as Western artists are."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">He praises Wang Ningde, an artist who creates a composite of film negatives sliced and rebuilt into an "unnerving" sculpture-like work, that reveals itself only when light shines through. "I've never seen work like this being done in the West," he says.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">The work has another advantage: It won't get censored. "Any kind of historical reference to Communism or anything too politically overt has to be controlled," says Montague-Sparey. "That's totally normal."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">
<h3>Blank walls</h3>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">For its part, the Chinese government is eager to develop this new photography-art scene.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Ten kilometers south of PHOTOFAIRS, Liu Heung Shing's lush, light-filled Shanghai Center of Photography sits on a quiet plot. The museum is one of the pioneering institutions of an ambitious state-backed project called the West Bund — the name of a semi-governmental firm with a tract of land it hopes to transform into China's version of New York's Museum Mile.</div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--fullwidth">
<div class="el__image--fullwidth js__image--fullwidth">
</div>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Like PHOTOFAIRS, SCoP aims to push photography in a new direction.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">"China's government doesn't care if you want to manipulate photographs and so on," says Liu. "There's much more room to develop for artists doing photography, rather than photographers doing photography in traditional sense."</div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--standard"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Liu introduces me to the West Bund's general manager, Gan Jin, who says the choice to open a photography center was pragmatic. "It takes time to incubate people's appreciation of art. I thought photography is the most blunt, fastest way. People don't have the patience for traditional mediums."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">The suggestion is photography can jump-start the buying of art by China's new middle class — flush with cash and hungry for cultural entrée. Liu says it's "an obvious opportunity... people have so much private property. But you go into their houses and they still have blank walls with silly calendars."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">The challenge is convincing people to buck up thousands for a photograph.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Montague-Sparey is still trying to educate cautious new buyers about editioning. PHOTOFAIRS does not exhibit any photo with an edition greater 25, guaranteeing each print's value. But it'll take time to "create and enforce the rules."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Meanwhile, foreign collectors are learning how to place Chinese photography into a tradition that's been dominated by Westerners. Montague-Sparey says he exhibits "canonical" works next to Chinese works to show a "progression." For example, the photos of Robert Mapplethorpe next to the sensual art of Yang Fudong.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">
<h3>'Absurdity, difficulty'</h3>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">As the market has changed, so has the art.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">Mimi Chun, the director of Hong Kong's Blindspot Gallery, has noticed a shift in China's scene from what she terms "export art" in the 90s, which heavily referenced Chinese culture for an outside audience, to new work using a "very universal" language. "I don't think you necessarily have to understand anything about China or Chinese to understand these works. Which is very different from the work that was made in the 90s.</div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--fullwidth">
<div class="el__image--fullwidth js__image--fullwidth">
<p>"I'm not saying whether that's good or bad," she adds. "Just trying to draw a defining line about what's changed."</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">One of Blindspot's represented artists is Cai Dongdong, featured prominently at PHOTOFAIRS. Years ago a photographer known for making charged black and white images, Cai now uses physical objects like mirrors to transform preexisting photographs, a reflection of his discomfort with putting new images into the world.</div>
<div class="el__embedded el__embedded--standard"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">"It is now very difficult to distinguish Western and Chinese audiences," Cai tells CNN Style. "I have withdrawn the role of image-making to start thinking from the perspective of the audience, and to contemplate the absurdity and difficulty of accepting an image."</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">It's reflective of an important shift in China's visual culture — once revered, the straight photograph has lost much of its social meaning.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph">That may be because some images are still forbidden to be seen. Naturally absent from PHOTOFAIRS and SCoP are any trace of Liu's famous Tiananmen pictures — records of the past that remain the most elusive and unspeakable of all.</div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"><em>PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai was held September 9-11, 2016 at the Shanghai Exhibition Center. PHOTOFAIRS San Francisco will be held for the first time January 27-29, 2017 at the Fort Mason Festival Pavilion.</em></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"></div>
<div class="zn-body__paragraph"><em>For more on Chinese photography, visit the Shanghai Center of Photography year-round at the West Bund.</em></div>
</div>
</div>
</section>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<div style="margin:0em 0 2.2em 0;font-size: 13px;color:#9E9E9E !important;float:none;">
by <a href="mailto:denton.2@osu.edu">denton.2@osu.edu</a> on September 19, 2016 </div>
<div style="clear:both;"></div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td></td>
<td style="display: block!important; max-width: 600px!important; margin: 0 auto!important; clear: both!important;" bgcolor="#EFEFEF">
<div style="padding: 15px; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto; display: block;">
<table style="width: 100%;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="font-size:11px;color:#666 !important;">
<p>
You are subscribed to email updates from <a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc">MCLC Resource Center</a> <br/>
To stop receiving these emails, <a href="http://u.osu.edu/mclc?sbe_unsubscribe=dd96223d74f9aa30">click here</a>. </p>
<p></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</body>
</html>