By following the life and practice of Luo Bonian, a photographer active in Shanghai and its vicinity in the 1930s and 40s, the exhibition presents an array of photography practice by a network of self-declared amateurs and highlights their social interactions. Through their effort, photography became recognized in China at the time as a medium of art of its own accord. Luo Bonian was born in 1911 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. While working at the banks in Zhejiang and Shanghai, he took up photography in his spare time. During this time, he published landscape and still life photos in popular magazines, including the Chinese Journal of Photography, Feiying (Flying Eagle), Xianxiang (Phenomena), Meishu Shenghuo (Art Life). He also had an acquaintance with Yu Dafu and his wife, Cao Xiyu and other cultural figures. Due to work, Luo relocated to Hong Kong in 1938. Photographs taken during this time consist of series of landscapes, architectures and portraits around Tsin Shui Wan, Kowloon Tong and Victoria Harbour. After the war broke out, Luo with his family and colleagues left Hong Kong in 1942 and arrived in the war-time capital Chongqing after a devious journey. When the war ended in 1945, he was sent to Chengdu and returned to Shanghai in the following year. During the successive relocations, he continued to take photos and printed them in smaller, hence portable sizes. Most of them were well-preserved in albums, thus free from the risk of being lost and damaged. Luo’s later-generation family member, Mr. Jin Youming collected his works from the 30s and 40s, which, in addition to a modest amount of the biographical records, form the first-hand materials for this exhibition and its research.
It was common for bank employees, office workers, doctors or lawyers to take part in photography in their spare time during that time. The rising middle-class was able to afford the cost and time to engage in such creative hobbies. Yet, as an art and cultural production, photography was not merely recreational or exclusively elitist. The amateur take on photography led it to diverge from the craft practiced at commercial photo studios and formed independent aesthetics. To some extent, this course of change in photography would not be possible without these amateurs. Represented by Liu Bannong, Chen Chuanlin, Lang Jingshan, Hu Boxiang, among others, the photographers consciously separated themselves from photographers working at commercial studios and with the press. They identified as “amateurs”. In the preface to the Beijing Guangshe Nianjian (Beijing Light Society Annual), Liu Bannong succinctly defines the nature of the group to be amateur, as opposed to career (not as in the present-day idea of the professional). Despite the asserted amateur stance, they had pronounced views on aesthetics. In Bannong tan Ying (Bannong on Photography), Liu emphasizes the subjectivity of photographers: “our goal is to create beauty, not to facsimile existing beauty.” Similarly, Hu Boxiang also underlines the significance of the photographer in Meishu Sheying tan (On Art Photography), “It (art photography) is not so much about machinery as it is about how photographers apply their artistry.” Guided by this tenet, the photographers interacted in diverse ways. A dynamic network came into being; people participated in club activities, organized exhibitions and competitions, published works in journals and magazines and interchanged thoughts and ideas. Magazines and journals were the ground and essential platform for the network; nearly all well-known photographic journals at the time were either founded or directed by photographers related to this network. For example, Chen Chuanlin and Lu Shifu were the directors at the Heibai Yingji (Black and White Album); Jin Shisheng founded the Feiying journal; Lin Zhipeng was the editor-in-chief of Tianpeng (Sky Roc). Other popular magazines also had columns or special editions dedicated to art photography, featuring works and reviews by photography hobbyists. The 8th-anniversary edition of The Young Companion (1933) was an “art photography special”. A 1934 issue of the Meishu Shenghuo devoted dozens of pages to photography, featuring works by Lang Jingshan, Liu Xucang, Chen Wanli, Wu Yinxian, Hu Junlei, Zhang Yinquan and other well-known photographers. Luo Bonian was also one of them.In addition, the art editors of the pictorial were very important "intermediary" at the time. They often referenced extensively designs, layouts and editorial styles found in foreign publications. As a result, the more avant-garde formal language, disseminated by art directors via the magazines, also contributed to their understanding of modern photography.
If assessed by the number of photographs and the diversity of themes, the 30s and 40s was the most productive phase in Luo’s practice. The styles and methods are mixed and plural. Some explore the then much promoted pictorial photography, which manifests apparent influence from pictorial photography from the West as well as the tradition of Chinese paintings. Others adopt and experiment with the western modernist elements and styles. The mix of styles and subject and the wide-ranging experimentations were as characteristic of the historical culture around Shanghai as they were a distinctive aspect in Luo’s work that sets him apart from other photographers in this exhibition. He recounted that for him photography was a way to balance life, relief from everyday work. Maybe this is why Luo comfortably moved between different styles and artistic endeavors; he did not think of photography as a commitment, thus was not bound to any set patterns. One of the most well-known works of Luo, Ji Weng (Getting Water with an Urn) or English titled Pattern was published in the 9th issue of The Chinese Journal of Photography (1934). The image shows a glass figurine relieved against an art deco pattern and hemmed with branches and flowers in the foreground. The glass figurine imitates the iconic female posture in La Source by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Overall, the image renders a calm and balanced feeling of beauty. By setting the translucent glass figurine against a background pattern that almost evokes the actual material, Luo built a stable composition. Another work Huanxiang (Illusion) zooms in on the glass figurine and superimposes with leaves. Interestingly, the same glass figurine also appears in the works of Jin Shisheng and other photographers. Among his exploration of formal language, a series of abstract collage took it to the furthest. Details of conifer needles, railings, tiles, reflections and other everyday scenes were repeated 8, 12, or 15 times, rotated and rearranged to compose abstract images. Some comments described this method as “montage photography”, others called it “graphic photography” or just “pattern”. Cartoonist, designer and artist Zhang Guangyu (1902-1965) published two series of photographs in the Shidai (Epoch) magazine (issue 7, vol. 7, 1935). In it, he advocated exploring formal aesthetics by using daily objects and scenes, such as the residential doors and windows and wires in his images, to graphically compose images. He proposed to organize a competition and invited submissions. We may safely assume that Luo made the collage works in response to this submission call since later in the year two series of them appeared in issue 11 of the magazine. Chunks of white cabbage, skinned apples, spinning tops, glassware with exaggerated lines, masts, interiors and architectural spaces, the bas-relief effect, and human figures in dark silhouettes were frequent subjects in his photos. Similar formal explorations can also be found in the works of Zhang Jingtian, Wu Zhongxing and Huang Zhongchang.
The exhibition situates Luo Bonian and his work in a network of social interactions and photography practice in the 30s and 40s. Their modernist experimentations and their identification as amateurs are two core strands investigated in this exhibition. Via the photographs created by Luo and the other twelve distinguishable photographers and corresponding documentation and archival materials, the exhibition brings the efforts of the “amateurs” in establishing photography as an art to the fore. Their production of images provided a blueprint of the modernist in the Chinese visual culture of the early twentieth century. The research at the Taikang Space has been concerned with the history and practice of photography since the beginning. The research of photography sheds light on social transformations. We insist on understanding history and the present so that insights from one inform understanding of the other. A vital component of the history of photography of the early twentieth century can be found in the case studies of photographers from the 1930s and 1940s. Presenting social and creative dynamics of the time, the exhibition illuminates a historical fragment with implications for studies of art history and cultural history. The exhibition is especially thankful to Mr. Jin Youming, who generously opened up his collection of originals to this academic intuition, which provided important materials for the exhibition.
Exhibited Artists: Luo Bonian, Hu Boxiang, Hu Junlei, Huang Zhongchang, Jin Shisheng, Lang Jingshan, Liu Haisu, Liu Xucang, Lu Fu, Shu Xincheng, Wu Zhongxing, Zhang Jingtian, Zhang Yinquan
More information: Professional Amateur and Emerging Modernity: Luo Bonian and His Contemporaries, 1930-1940s10th June - 7th August 2021Taikang SpaceRed No.1-B2, Caochangdi, Cuigezhuang, Chaoyang District, Beijing, CHINA, 100015www.taikangspace.com
