survey_14 — Photography of China
1. Wang Jinsong — 王劲松 (b. 1963, Suileng (Heilongjiang))
Graduated from: Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (Chinese painting), 1987
Staged photography about the norm: families lined up by the rule of the official portrait.
- "Standard Family" (1996)— a series of staged group portraits in which people stand as if for an ID photograph.
- Irony without a grimace — the everyday, photographed so that it becomes a verdict.
- Painting and photography — the two lines run in parallel: the artist is known as a painter as well.
2. Zhang Hai'er — 张海儿 (b. 1957, Guangzhou)
Graduated from: Shanghai Theatre Academy; Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, 1982; 1988
The street of the 1980s–90s: the city shot with flash and almost at point-blank range.
- Street series of the 1980s — the city's people head-on, in close-up, with no distance.
- Flash as a device — hard light pulls a face out of the crowd.
- A theatre education — stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy (1982) before photography.
3. Lü Nan — 吕楠 (b. 1962, Beijing)
Long series: years of photographing a single subject — faith, the village, the road.
- Four great cycles — "The Forgotten Ones", "The Road", "The Four Seasons", "Buddhism": each series is years of work.
- Magnum — collaboration with the agency since the 1990s.
- Document without staging — photographing from inside a community rather than observing from outside.
4. Jiang Zhi — 蒋志 (b. 1971, Yuanjiang (Hunan))
Graduated from: China Academy of Art, 1995
Photography as a letter: light, fire and a private history.
- "Love Letters" — flowers and bouquets shot in the dark with flash: tenderness and the trace of fire.
- Light as material — series in which the light source itself becomes the image.
- Education — China Academy of Art, 1995.
