RAS Art Focus
When: Sunday, September 13, 2015
Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Where: Li Room at the Radisson Blu Xingguo Hotel
78 Xingguo Lu (near Hunan Lu)
Price: 50 RMB members, 100 RMB non-members (includes a soft drink or glass of wine/beer)
RSVP: artgroup@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn (Julie Chun)
The Representation of Landscape in Contemporary Chinese Photography
We are pleased to launch a new season of Art Focus with a special lecture on Chinese contemporary photography to coincide with Photo Shanghai 2015. Photo Shanghai (held at the Shanghai Exhibition Centre from Sept 10-13) is one of the largest art fairs in China that is solely dedicated to showcasing photographic works by artists of established-renown to emerging young talents. To gain a better insight into this influential yet a relatively new genre in China, we have invited He Yining, a photography historian and curator to present her talk entitled, “The Representation of Landscape in Contemporary Chinese Photography.”
About the Lecture
Influenced by the contemporary landscape photography in the West, especially the American New Topographic, landscape has gradually become an indispensible subject in contemporary Chinese photography. From the Chinese coastline to the Yangtze River, from national highways to the Great Wall, those natural/ artificial landscapes closely related to power, memory and identity have been the focus represented through the lens of cameras by Chinese artists.
The lecture will start by presenting the method and methodology of landscape in Chinese contemporary photography. It will introduce and analyze how landscape is observed and interpreted by contemporary Chinese photographers, and how it is connected with the fast-changing Chinese reality. The lecture will then compare Chinese and Western landscape traditions and explore the different characteristics in landscape as a subject in both Chinese and Western photography. Lastly, the speaker will discuss problems existing in contemporary Chinese landscape practice and its causes.
About the Speaker
He Yining is a writer, photography historian and curator.
She is a graduate of the London College of Communication with an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. Yining has intensive working experience in the media industry and has covered stories all over China and Europe for many leading magazines, newspapers and organizations. She is actively writing and translating photography-related articles and books while curating exhibitions across China.
Her current research focuses on the tradition of British social documentary photography, contemporary Chinese landscape photography and contemporary photography publishing in China. Yining initiated the Go East Project (www.goeastblog.com) in 2014, which aims to introduce contemporary Chinese photography to the West and support young talents to establish a local photography platform of an international scope while exploring the infinite possibilities of photography.
Website www.heyining.com