“Photography of China: Course Introduction”Lectured by Dr. Marine Cabos-Brullé, founder of Photography of China
Today in China, photography is playing an increasing important role locally. This is particularly noticeable in the flourishing market (primarily through demand for early photographs), the burgeoning of photography festivals and institutions, which have endeavoured to offer an international platform for Chinese photography. From an international perspective, numerous scholarly research, exhibitions and special media coverage testify to the growing interest in photographs of China in recent years. This appetite for photographs is accompanied by a desire to re-collect China’s past, due to the dramatic loss of artefacts after over a hundred years of political and social turmoil.
The lecture will offer insight into how a great variety of players have shaped the field of photography in China. We will examine the current reception of photographs of China today, shed light on early developments, and touch on the overall chronological structure of this eight-week programme. This introductory session will prepare students to gain a general understanding of what is about the history of photography of China.
“The Making of a Standard Mountain: Huangshan Photography and Huangshan Painting in the 1930s”Lectured by PD Dr. Juliane Noth, Heisenberg-Fellow | Research Associate, Universität Hamburg
In the 1930s, Huangshan, a mountain famous for its scenic beauty, became the target of touristic development, and a frequent motif in photography as well as painting. Images of the mountain proliferated in popular pictorials, travel literature and photography journals. Photographers and painters referenced earlier traditions of Chinese landscape painting as the mountain was refigured as emblematic of a national landscape. PD Dr. Juliane Noth will discuss how photographers adapted their medium to the landscape, and how this changed perceptions about the history and the pictorial conventions of ink painting.
“Trick photography in Republican Era”Lectured by Dr. Panpan Yang, Lecturer in the Arts and Visual Cultures of Modern China, SOAS
This lecture session offers an overview of trick photography in Republic China, focusing on double-exposure portraits and stop-motion tricks. A 1931 article published in Photography Pictorial (Sheying huabao) unlocked the secret of ‘making one object suddenly (dis)appear’ or ‘having a lifeless object walking or flying itself.’ The former case is what we now call the stop trick or substitution splice; the latter case is what we now call the stop-motion technique or stop-motion animation. In a Méliès-like, almost simplified fashion, the writer emphasized ‘stopping the camera’ (tingpai) as the trick for the two cases; the difference between the two was said to be one of degree and not of kind—stopping the camera once or many times. Weaving together print materials, photographs, and trick sequences from 1920s and 1930s Chinese silent cinemas, we show that in the Chinese historical context, stop-motion animation was surprisingly understood as part and parcel of trick photography.
“The Writing, Transformation, and Rewriting of Photo Archives in Chinese Photography from the 1940s to Date”Lectured by Yining He, writer, researcher and curator
In recent years, photographers around the globe have begun to break the conventional linear sequence in the construction of photographic texts, opting for a new wave that allows multiple narrative strategies of the real or the fictional. They fuse documents, historical photos, texts, 10 and carefully-constructed images, taking viewers to times and places in the past, to boundaries that can or cannot be told. This kind of practice not only reflects the artists’ interest and urgent desire to delve into history but also reveals the space that has been opened for photographic practices by the richness of social and cultural environments in history.
Based on Yining He’s ongoing research on the historical narrative of contemporary Chinese photography, this paper will focus on the relationship between archives and photographic art in a broader context, examining the 20 following three interrelated archival issues: the production, dissemination, and storage of public photo archives in the 1940s; the development of the resource structure of photo archives in the recent past; and the different methods of transforming photo archives into works of art in contemporary Chinese photography.
“Authentically Socialist: A Case Study on Chinese Photography during Cultural Revolution”Lectured by Dr. Shuxia Chen, Curator, China Gallery, Chau Chak Wing Museum
The turmoil of the Cultural Revolution reached a climax in the late 1960s and took a dramatic turn in 1971. Lin Biao, Minister of Defence, deputy leader of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), and Chairman Mao's "closest comrade-in-arms and hand-picked successor" died in a mysterious plane crash in Mongolia, supposedly during an attempt to flee China for the Soviet Union. Lin was immediately excoriated as a traitor to the revolution, and a threat to Mao himself. For many Lin's denouement marked the real end of Cultural Revolution zealotry and idealism.
“Long Live the Glorious May Seventh Directive”, a photobook that celebrated the close comraderie between Mao and Lin appeared on the eve of Lin’s death. This lecture will use this photobook as a case study to discern over the evolution of an aesthetic approach that changed according to the political climate, and examine how an ideological system was constructed and impacted on the masses in socialist China.
“Picturing Geo-politics: New Practices in the Chinese Contemporary Art”Lectured by Yining He, writer, researcher and curator
In 2020, China was being affected by a shifting geopolitical environment at different levels - political, economic and socio-cultural - as global income inequality increases due to the ongoing impact of the pandemic. The course will focus on the practices of young Chinese artists around the new geopolitical issues and trying to raise the following questions, including but not limited to, what are the shared experiences of young Chinese artists who grew up in the post-Cold War period? How did the changing new geopolitical environment influence their personal experiences and creative choices? What knowledges did these practices confront and produced? How do they define themselves concerning "Chinese" through the narrative of work? Finally, as the researcher, how can we challenge the theoretical framework of art through writing and develop an autonomous discursive interpretation around Chinese contemporary art?
“Independent Publishing from Contemporary China”Lectured by Dr. Marine Cabos-Brullé & Zhen Shi, visual artist and founder of La Maison de Z independent publishing house
Zhen Shi is a French-Chinese visual artist and founder of the independent publishing house called La Maison de Z. La Maison de Z is an on-going project focusing on Chinese contemporary photography and independent publications. Using publishing as a way of research which explores the intricate relationship between realities and memories, La Maison de Z was founded by Zhen Shi in 2015 and start to publish their own editions in 2018, the project allows a growing audience discover the most recent works of emerging Chinese artists.
Zhen Shi’s peculiar approach to printmaking resonates with the current growth in independent publishing culture globally and in China. For the past two decades, China saw the proliferation of independent publishing houses, self-publications, and specialised photobook fairs. This discussion between Zhen Shi and Marine Cabos-Brullé will examine the current curiosity for Chinese photobooks.
“Curating photography from China and Japan”Lectured by Simon Baker, Director of Maison Européenne de la Photographie
Simon Baker will offer an introduction to contemporary Chinese photography, particularly the generation of Ren Hang and 223 (Lin Zhipeng) and their successors, through a comparison with the practice of the preceding subsequent generations of photographers working in Japan. Through an emphasis on the printed page, both in terms of artists books and photo books, Baker will explore the radical avant-garde potential of post-war and contemporary practice in the Asian context.
More information: Specialist Art Course “Photography of China: 1839-2021”In association with SOAS - Postgraduate Diploma in Asian ArtCourse duration: 08 October - 26 November 2021 Schedule: Every Friday at 12.00 – 13.30 Mode of attendance: Online Course fees: £500Register here: www.soas.ac.uk
