The Starting Point and Early Focus of Chinese Photography
In the early days of the invention of photography, due to the limitations of technical conditions, most Chinese photographers only focused on taking portraits of people.
For China, contemporary photography has a fairly clear starting point— 1976/1977. The concept of contemporary photography in China has undergone considerable changes in the past 40 years with the development of society, economy, culture and photography itself at home and abroad. According to these changes, the process of contemporary photography in China can be roughly divided into four stages as explained as follows.
The Rise of Unofficial Photography (1976—1979)
During this period of time, some amateur photographers formed a private network to systematically photograph the memorial activities spontaneously held by the masses after Premier Zhou Enlai’s death, and edit these photos into a book for social dissemination. These historical images, known as the “April 5th Movement Photography”, preserve people’s memory of the event and play an important role in a critical historic moment in contemporary China.
New Wave Photography (1980—1989)
Since the 1980s, various Western arts have been introduced into China through reproduction and exhibition. Hundreds of theoretical works have been translated and published in a short time. New photographic journals and magazines have also appeared, and many film fairs and exhibitions have appeared all over the country. The result of this “information explosion” in photographic creation is that the main western photographic styles since the beginning of the twentieth century have been reproduced in China in the 1980s.
After learning and absorbing the “diversification period” of Western photography style, documentary photography became the mainstream of the new wave movement in the late 1980s. The Chinese documentary photography works from 1980 to 1990 follow two main directions, i.e. to express the eternal spirit of the ordinary people and Chinese civilization, or to take the tragic fate of “people”.
Experimental Photography (1990—2006)
In terms of time, experimental photography appeared in the late 1980s, but it did not form an influential trend in the field of experimental art until the mid-1990s. Experimental photographers usually work with experimental artists and exhibit their works in the same independent art exhibition. In this trend, photographers put concepts and words above performance and deconstruct reality through artistic experiments. Instead of focusing on capturing moments in life, they pay more attention to the way of artistic expression and try to control the perspective of works, which leads to the popularity of “artificially constructed” images.
The Development of Experimental Photography Institutions (2007—)
The Third Shanghai Biennale in 2000 and the First Guangzhou Triennial in 2002 marked the legalization and internationalization of Chinese experimental art, including experimental photography. Subsequently, a new chapter of contemporary photography was launched in China. This art began to emerge from the small circle of experimental photographers and critics, and participate in the cultural life and art education of the whole society. In parallel with this change, new photographic exhibition venues, research centers, critical research and commercial channels have emerged, indicating that contemporary photography in China has entered a new and institutionalized stage. Contemporary photographic works not only occupy a prominent position in the large- scale biennial and triennial exhibitions, but also mix with popular culture to develop a large-scale photographic festival with Chinese characteristics. The number of individual exhibitions and group exhibitions in open space has increased rapidly, and some still stick to the original intention of experimental photography.
