Over the past decade, China has undergone an unprecedented museum building boom. While most of the existing institutions specialised in photography are chiefly located in large cities (such as private museums and galleries in Shanghai and Beijing), a growing number of satellite venues starts to open their doors in remote areas as part of a broad central government initiative. This obsessive drive to build more and more cultural facilities has sometimes resulted in opulent, and architecturally iconic buildings sitting underused or even completely empty today. Quite contrarily to this intriguing phenomenon, the Lianzhou Museum of Photography (LMP, 连州摄影博物馆), despite its remote location in China’s southern hinterlands, has endeavoured to offer an international platform for Chinese contemporary photography. What makes Lianzhou Museum of Photography different?
The continuation of a decade-long festival
First and foremost, Lianzhou Museum of Photography did not come out of the blue, but emerged from a fifteen years authoritative photography festival. Since 2005, Lianzhou Foto Festival (连州国际摄影年展) has been gathering Chinese and international photography lovers to participate in a curated program of discussions, portfolio reviews and audiovisual events. Each year, tens of thousands of visitors attend over 60 exhibitions showcasing photographers from all over the world. In fifteen years, the festival has gained international recognition as the most professional photography festival in China.
Of particular interest, Lianzhou Foto has been instrumental in bringing forward local emerging talents on the international scene, such as Zhang Hui, Ren Hang, Zhang Haier, Feng Li, Lu Guang, Liu Bolin, Wang Qingsong, Zhang Dali, Adou, Li Zhengde, Yan Ming and Wang Ningde. In its fifteen years, the festival showcased among others the work of Joan Fontcuberta, Michael Wolf, Daido Moriyama, Juno Calypso, Jean Baudrillard, Martin Parr, Mathieu Pernot, Araki Nobuyoshi and Mohamed Bourouissa. Overall, the festival has been offering the artists the chance to grasp the universal use of the medium.
The sole public museum dedicated to contemporary photography in China
The ambition of Lianzhou Foto Festival has always been to provide the public an educational programme, and a panoramic view of what is going on in photography. Since 2017 this ambition has been taken on by the Lianzhou Museum of Photography that opened in the city’s historical centre, granting China its first public institution devoted to the medium. In only two years, the museum planned a great variety of activities while setting up sixteen exhibitions that showcased pioneering Chinese and Western photographers. In doing so, the museum has been instrumental in working towards the institutionalization of photography in China offering the platform it lacked for exhibition, exchange and discussion around the medium.
The Museum also champions pioneering architecture. Designed by O-office Architects, a young architectural firm based in Guangzhou, the architecture of Lianzhou Museum of Photography is comprised of two interlocking buildings, one old, and one new. The design concept is rooted in the urban context of old Lianzhou. The form of the new building blends fully with the urban texture of the old city. Inspired by the "large Lianzhou style houses", three continuous sloped planes cover the building; they create vertical variations in the interior space and form a contrast with the adjacent three-story flat-roofed old building. The facade extends the continuous roof onto the street, transforming the entire new building into a roof for this "large house". A roof garden and an outdoor theatre link the old and new buildings of the museum, and the space between the buildings is completely open to the public, becoming a part of the urban fabric.
After the architects learned about Lianzhou's local architectural materials and construction methods, they proposed using many locally-produced materials that were unique to the area, including dark gravel, steel plate, light brick walls, and green tiles. The green tiles on the continuous roof of the new building are the only decorative touch, and the arrangement of the tiles produces a rich texture. In contrast to the way these tiles are laid on old-style roofs, the new building's construction retained some of the gaps between the green tiles to allow for air flow between the interior courtyard and the outside, a unique construction method suited to the local climate. In addition to fully utilizing the width and height of the site to control direct sunlight, the architects employed a number of architectural techniques in the interior courtyard and stilted construction to reduce day-to-day energy consumption. Installing a split-grade climate control system for different functional spaces reduces the museum's energy consumption and guarantees flexibility in later use.
A unique Sino-French joint venture
Lianzhou Museum of Photography is not only the sole public museum dedicated to contemporary photography in China, it is also a unique Sino-French joint venture co-directed by the Chinese Duan Yuting and the French François Cheval, both sharing a constant striving to promote contemporary photography.
By joining forces, Duan and Cheval intend to transcend the “mainstream contemporary photography” as Cheval claimed. “This museum will find its place in the cultural policy of the country and in the world of photography thanks to its capacity to produce the unprecedented and its refusal to comply with an iconic vision of photography in order to, on the contrary, support all types of experiment," he said. As a consequence, each year the museum strives to push the boundaries of photography exhibitions, showcasing experimental work beyond traditional documentary practice, while fostering A-list specialists in the field.
A cultural space for local residents
The museum, with its sleek design mixed with local architectural elements, aims to become a cultural hub for international photography as wells as an integral part of the Lianzhou residents community. "We are building a cultural space for Lianzhou residents, who will be the primary visitors to the museum," said Duan.
Supported by local municipalities, the construction of the museum is considered an important driver of the rejuvenation of Lianzhou's old city; it is also an important symbol and milestone in the city's development. The area around the museum looks the way it did in the Republican era in the early twentieth century. But in recent years, the old streets of the old city have contrasted notably with modern urban development. The association of traditional material with contemporary design allowed the museum to fill the gap between old and contemporary Lianzhou. Slowly but surely, this mountain town in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong is gradually becoming an urban public space for local events and culture.
2019 Programme
Lianzhou Foto Festival and its Museum have established a firm reputation for groundbreaking international work, and this year festival looks set to continue the good work with this year exhibitions. Taking place next 29 November 2019, Lianzhou Foto Festival is themed “A Chance for the Unpredictable”, which pays homage to photography’s practice and malpractice. Curated by Peter Pfrunder (Swiss Foundation for Photography Director), this theme exhibition gathers the works of Huang Huang (China), Lukas Felzmann (Swiss), Hayahisa Tomiyasu (Japan), Anna Niskanen (Finland), Collectif Fact (UK), Delio Jasse (Angola), Jenny Rova (Sweden), Jun Ahn (Korea), and Seba Kurtis (Argentina) among other artists to be featured. Their works explore the tension between controlling the image and capturing the unexpected, between conscious perception and the unseen. They embrace the uncontrollable unpredictable happenings as part of the beauty, the poetry and the magic of photography.
The festival will coincide with the unveiling of Lianzhou Museum of Photography’s four winter exhibitions, which includes solo exhibitions from Chinese artists such as Chen Ronghui, Chen Zhuo, Wei Bi, Lau Chi-Chung, Doreen Chan, Zhang Yunmin, Kanthy Peng, Guo Yanxin, Wang Hanlin, Liang Yinfei, Oyun_erdene and many more. Like each year, the festival will also invite guest curators to present group exhibitions as part of our programme. MoCP Chicago Director Natasha Egan, will curate ‘Living Mountains’ a group show presenting the work of American women photographers exploring Man’s relationship with Nature. The exhibition will showcase the work of artists Penelope Umbrico, Alice Hargrave, Beth Dow, Jin Lee, Millee Tibbs and Abbey Hepner. Finally, the winter exhibitions will present four new exhibitions showcasing the works of Chinese and overseas artists: Indian artist Sukanya Ghosh, French artist Denis Darzacq, and Chinese artists Zhang Xiao and Birdhead.
More information:LIANZHOU FOTO FESTIVALA Chance for the UnpredictableNovember 30, 2019 - January, 3 2019
LIANZHOU MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY WINTER EXHIBITIONSNovember 30, 2019 - April 5, 2020Lianzhou Museum of Photography, 120 Zhongshan South Road, Lianzhou, Guangdong www.lmop.org.cn/enwww.lianzhoufoto.com
