China,which was being corroded by illegally conducted opium trade day by day,commissioned Lin Zexu to go to Guangzhou to enforce opium ban and confiscate and destroy opium.This move eventually led to the First Opium War beginning with a fleet of warship being sent by British authorities whose interests were undermined by the ban.The war ended in 1842 with the defeat of China and the signature of Treaty of Nanjing ,in which the Qing government was forced to cede Hong Kong Island to Britain and open Guangzhou,Xiamen,Fuzhou,Ningbo and Shanghai as treaty ports.Since then,China has been forced to become a part of global capitalist market and got involved in the first wave of Britain-dominated globalization of gold-standardsystem- based international trade.

 

On August 15,1844,a French trade mission visiting China arrived at Macao.While staying in Macao and Guangzhou,delegation deputy and customs inspector Jules Alphonse Eugène Itier took a number of earliest photographs of China with his daguerreotype camera.Following steps of the "Trade War"in Pearl River Delta,photography also landed in China.Hereafter,photography has never been absent from the hundred years globalization of China.Rather,it acts as a history in parallel to globalization,seemingly an inseparable shadow.

 

Interestingly,in the same year when Jules Alphonse Eugène Itier took these photos,ZOU Boqi,a Chinese gentry who lived in Michong Village of Nanhai,Guangdong,wrote an article entitled Sheying Zhi Qi Ji ( 摄影之器记,Notes on a Mechanism for Capturing Images )[1].Although this article is about black-box viewfinder used for mapping,the word,摄影(Sheying),created by ZOU,was gradually identified as the standard and professional translation of Photography in Chinese in the early twentieth century after decades of competition with other Chinese terms for the meaning of photography.

 

Photography,the representative technique of industrial civilization and modernization,摄影,the emerging Chinese word in linguistics,appeared in the same time and originated or developed in the same place - the Pearl River Delta.Thus,as the starting point of photography into China,the Pearl River Delta is,to a certain degree,the first proving ground for visual modernization represented by photography into China,a place where various visual cultures intersect and the origin of visual globalization in China,and also represents a tension between localization and globalization.Nowadays,globalization is facing a new turning point,and it is of special significance under this background to sort out and reflect the course:How did a regional history of photography (Pearl River Delta) and the historical process of globalization synchronize and mirror each other?

 

Studies on the history of photography in China are on the rise in recent years.Among them,the most crucial subject matters for studies of photography of the Republic of China during the 19th Century are historical events and figures in the Pearl River Delta.In addition to being the witness of the earliest photographs of China as described above and the birth place of the word "photography",Pearl River Delta is also the place where many of the other "first"events of photography in China took place:

 

The first Chinese news coverage of photography:On October 19,1839 (two months after the invention of photography was officially announced),Canton Press ,a Macao-based newspaper in English,reprinted an article published in the American publication N.Y.AMERICAN under the name Mr.Walsh,which describes the author's experience of visiting a daguerreotype studio and viewing daguerreotype photos.

 

The first Chinese to make a camera:According to "Notes on a Mechanism for Capturing Images "written by ZOU Boqi in 1844 and his other manuscripts and belongings,it is speculated that he had made a camera obscura for surveying and mapping maps and made his own collodion wet glass plate for photography during that time.

 

The first photo studio opened in China:In 1845,American George West opened a commercial daguerreotype studio in Hong Kong;

 

The first commercial Chinese photos published in the west:In the summer of 1858,the Swiss photographer Pierre Rossier took a series of three-dimensional photographs in Hong Kong and Guangdong and published them in the following year.

 

The first Chinese-owned photo studio:In an advertisement in 1904,LAI Afong,a native of Gaoming,Guangdong,set up a photo studio in Hong Kong in 1859[1].

 

The earliest Chinese photography monographs:Besides ZOU Zhengjun's Posthumous Papers and ZOU Zhengjun's Manuscript by ZOU Boqi printed and published in 1873,and the articles on photography,Notes on a Mechanism for Capturing Images and Science Updates ,WU Yangzeng's New Edition of Photography and ZHOU Yaoguang's Practical Photography published in Guangdong in 1907 are also very important works of early Chinese photography.

 

In the 1870s,Guangdong witnessed the appearance of the earliest group of professional photographers and photo studio owners,thanks to a geographical and historical advantage as well as its open and pragmatic culture.As the communicator and instructor of photography,these people promoted the photo studio business from coastal cities to the hinterland.That is why researchers call them the "Cantonese effect"of the era of Chinese photo studios."Whether because it was the studios opened by the Cantonese or the start-ups opened by local people who learned the technique,the photo studios began extensively involving in people's lives.Since taking the first image of life in the photo studio,some of our ancestors began building their own visual archives of themselves and their families.A series of images,such as that of urban architectures,pastoral sceneries,folk customs and social lives taken by these photo studios have become the earliest active visual archives of our nation."[1]

 

From 1844 to the present,the historical accounts and figures that make up more than 170-year history of photography in the Pearl River Delta are numerous.The entry point of this article and the exhibition planned during the same period is not a textual research by listing historical facts,but rather a case study of eight pairs of photographers or art groups in different periods that mirror each other,which demonstrates two parallel veins of historical images,thus discussing how photography is independent of the reality of history,and how it became a self-constructed parallel history and system.

 

I am not emphasizing Pearl River Delta as the starting point for its self-coronation.Rather,I am making a reflection that is loyal to the historical context.In taking the Pearl River Delta as the starting point is to gain an access rather than imposing limitation to the estuary.Only by recognizing the peculiarities of the Pearl River Delta in the historical process of "photography entering China"can subsequent studies achieve coherent logic.Photographic practices related to the Pearl River Delta provide a mirror image and a sample of visual globalization.Through this practice,we can trace back and look forward to the whole context from classic to contemporary.The cases discussed below will build and clarify this context.Moreover,the title of this paper defines photography in the Pearl River Delta as "Cantonese Photography".By borrowing "Cantonese",a concept of linguistic classification,this definition is intended to emphasize regional characteristics of cultural homogeneity instead of regional division defined by geographic features.Therefore,the cases cited covers people in Guangdong,Hong Kong and Macao as well as overseas Chinese and Chinese descendents of Guangdong origin.If the concept of photography is studied from the linguistic angle,the most interesting thing is the semantic change after the English word "photography"is translated into Chinese and Japanese.The English word "photography"originates from Greek words "φῶςphos"(i.e.,"light ray") and "γραφιgraphi"(i.e.,"drawing") or "γραφήgraphê",and the combination of those two words means "drawing pictures with light ray".In "摄影",the Chinese version of photography,the character "摄"means the action of taking,absorbing,taking good care of,acting on behalf of someone,approaching,capturing; the character "影"means an image formed when a thing blocks the light,which has light around no light in center but has light on the perimeter; the combination of those two characters can be interpreted as "capturing,obtaining an image formed due to light".The English word "photography"is translated into Japanese as "portrait",which means "portray something as it is".The English meaning "drawing pictures with light"underscores the means and process of photography,the Chinese meaning "capturing image"underlines the result of photography; the Japanese meaning "portray something as it is"stresses the authenticity of photography.It can be seen that unlike Westerners and Japanese,who pay more attention to producing mechanism and object relationship of photography,Chinese people pay more attention to the presentation and composition of photography.This view of photography continues ideological tradition of Chinese painting—drawing is not just reproducing the world,but also creating a new world.Just like Graham Clarke points out in his book entitled as The Photograph,"photos do not reflect a real reality but a surreal or spiritual reality.In this created visual myth,photos enable us to see things that we would not have seen otherwise.Cameras become man-made eyes,through which people review the world by studying visible acts in 'scenes' created by photographers.Truthful records are transformed into a metaphysical moment that freeze-frames excellence."[1] In fact,the following cases reflecting historical changes of photography in the Pearl River Delta are exactly the response and evidence of the foregoing view of photography.

 

 

Since 1844,when Jules Itier took the first batch of photographs of China in Macao and Guangzhou,photographers from Europe and America has flocked to Mainland China through the Pearl River Delta and started their photographic activities in China.There is no lack of famous photographers who won worldwide reputation and were written into the history of photography thanks to their photographic works of China,such as Felix Beato,a war photographer famous for shooting battle scenes; Charles Leander Weed,one of the most outstanding landscape photographers in the history of photography; Milton M.Miller,the best portrait photographer in the 1990s.However,in terms of depth,broadness and artistry of shooting China,no one could compare with John Thomson,a Briton.In 1868,Thomson moved from Singapore to Hong Kong and opened a photo studio,thus beginning his 4-year-long tour of photography in China that covered 4000-5000 miles.In 1873-1874,Sampson Low,a Londonbased publisher,published Illustrations of China and Its People ,a 4-volume photographic work containing 200 photos.As a result,"Thomson of China"became famous and was seen as one of the most skilled photographers at that time.

 

As Thomson made clear in the author's preface to "Illustrations of China and Its People ",his initial intention on the book was to reveal China and its people,arts,conventions and local conditions and customs in different places,and he hoped to convey what he had seen and learned faithfully to his readers[2].Most photos included in that book were documentary photos selected for this purpose,or even illustrative photos that were like the results of field work of anthropology.Therefore,photographic historians generally defined him as a "pioneer of social documentary photography".After a careful review of all of his negative images collected at Wellcome Library in London,the author argues that he was also distinguished and excellent in terms of artistry of photographs among his contemporary photographers.At that time,photographers opening photo studios in the Pearl River Delta sold their photos as tourist souvenirs,so they would generally shoot landmarks or similar tourist spots.Although Thomson had to take such photos for a living,he often had people posed for taking pictures.For example,in the photo of the Ruins of St.Paul’s Cathedral — a landmark of Macao — taken in 1870,he arranged for three people wearing bamboo hats to stand in front of the ruins of the Cathedral in the center of the picture.The diagonal line formed by terrace edges crosses the triangle formed by the three people,thus adding a unique spice and vitality to an otherwise dull and boring standard shot of the landmark.The Hong Kong newspaper,The China Mail dated December 12,1868 published a commentary on a collection of Hong Kong photos taken by Thomson,which praised the artistic quality of those pictures to the effect that the appraisal of photos in part 3 was more inclined to the aesthetic beauty of those photos than to the commemorative significance of specific places shown in them,and the tones of those pictures were so sophisticated that photos in dark brown tone looked more like painting with a pleasing artistic effect[1].

 

In the photo album entitled as Views on the North Rivers ,a collection of photos taken by Thomson in 1870 during a northward trip along the Pearl River,his photographic composition clearly showed the perspective commonly used in Chinese landscape painting:there are miniature people on rocks,bridges or near river rapids in the foreground; there are rivers and riverside buildings occupying a big part of the photo in medium shot; there are rolling and hazy hills in long shot (according to Thomson in his preface,due to high humidity in local climate,the time of exposure is rather long.Plus dusty air,the clarity of distant views was affected).By that time,Thomson had lived in China for two years.Is this oriental landscape opinion attributed to the impact of Thomson's interaction with Chinese literati painters or to his spontaneous response to Chinese mountains and rivers?Among all photos about China taken in late Qing Dynasty,Thomson's "landscape photography"cannot be found in photos taken by other Western photographers and is seldom seen in photos taken by Chinese local photographers.In a sharp contrast to Thomson's photographic style is the photographic style of Lai Afong,a native of Gaoming,Guangdong and Thomson's contemporary archrival.In 1850s,Taiping Rebellion (1851) and the Second Opium War (1856) broke out.Many Guangdong people moved to Hong Kong to flee war.Among those people,some professional painters learned photography from Westerners and became the first batch of Chinese photo studio operators,among whom Afong was a shining star.

 

In one of its advertisements,Afong Photo Studio claimed to be opened in 1859.If so,Afong Photo Studio should be the earliest photo studio opened by Chinese.In 1870s,Afong defeated numerous foreign photographers on market and became the most successful commercial photographer in Hong Kong.He even hired a number of Western photographers.Foreign photographers,who were contemporary peers and competitors of Afong,thought highly of him.As pointed out by Thomson in his article entitled as Hong Kong Photographers ,there was a Chinese photographer named Afong in Hong Kong.He enjoyed a delicate taste in art and his high-quality works could be marketable in London.Chinese understanding of art differed from Western understanding of art.But Afong's works differed a lot from those of his Chinese peers and were easily acceptable to Westerners.Judging from landscape photos taken by Afong,he surely had deep love for nature and beautiful scenery.Many photos were really excellent and showed great skills and carefully chosen shooting angles.Among all Chinese photographers Thomson had known,Afong's taste and abilities were impressive and Afong was an exceptional Chinese photographer[1].In the opinion of Griffith,who used to be an employee of Afong Photo Studio,"Mr.Afong was already a strong competitor on the arena of European Art and photos taken by him were among the best photographic works.Mr.Afong was a leading Chinese photographer in Hong Kong"[2].In addition to taking portrait photos for customers in his photo studio,Afong also accepted shooting tasks from many government agencies.For instance,on September 22-23,1874,Afong took a series of photos reflecting a devastating typhoon in Hong Kong and Macau.The caption states that:"the following photos present Hong Kong and Macau in wake of a devastating typhoon.This is the largest-scale,most complete and detailed collection of photos reflecting the recent typhoon and vividly reflects the impact of typhoon."[3] Afong also took portrait photos of celebrities like Hong Kong's former governor Sir Arthur Edward Kennedy,Russian grand duke Alico and local business tycoons.The celebrity photography helped pushed Afong's career to a peak.Probably because of Afong's early experience working as an apprentice at photo studios opened by foreign photographers,his shooting levels and photo production quality and strict,nuanced and prudent light used in his photographic composition were more like what foreign photographers did or even better than what they did.As early as in 1870s,Afong employed excellent darkroom postprocessing techniques to produce a negatives-combined photo by putting together a streetscape photo full of various shop signs and a number of human portraits.This photo could be almost regarded as China's earliest creative advertising photograph.With so many photographical achievements,Afong is arguably the earliest ancestor of professional Chinese photographers.

 

A British photographer took landscape photos with oriental artistic conception,while a Chinese photographer presented photos conforming to Western professional standard.A dispenser of active globalization was deeply moved by local artistic thoughts,while a recipient of passive globalization took the initiative in making bold innovations.Due to dislocation of angle of view resulting from dislocation of identity,early photography in the Pearl River Delta exhibited unique vitality of photography after cultural integration.

 

 

Photography was introduced in China in the late Qing dynasty.Since then it has been gradually accepted by Chinese people rather than being misconstrued as western sorcery that could extract soul out of a human body.At the end of the 19th century,photography began to reach two ends of the social ladder:At the bottom rung,thanks to promotion conducted by Cantonese,photo studios were established nationwide and developed connections with citizens' daily life; at the top,it was brought into the court and officials and noble lords' mansions,and became a sort of entertainment for the upper-class.For example,Empress Dowager Cixi and Puyi,the last Emperor of China,were both photography enthusiasts.Afterwards,photography has long been regarded as a symbol of modernization and a strong power during the Self-strengthening Movement,Constitutional Reform and Modernization,1911 (Xinhai) Revolution that overthrew the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China (ROC).In the New Culture Movement,Chinese intellectuals even deemed it as a fruitful result achieved by developed western countries,as well as an instrument based on science and democracy.Therefore,some of these intellectuals in major cities and professionals,such as doctors and attorneys,became the first photo artists in China who use photographic equipment to create art and express themselves.They established photography societies,published photo magazines and albums,and organized photo exhibitions.All such efforts resulted in the first peak of China's photography history between 1920s and 1930s.

 

Since the 1911 (Xinhai) Revolution Cantonese people have become pioneers who promoted photography by usage of printed media,including but not limited to in 1912,Pictorial Magazine of Current Affairs in Guangzhou run by Pan Dawei et.al,Pictorial Magazine of the Truth run by Gao Jianfu,Gao Qifeng and Zhong Kun in 1922,Photos Magazine ,the first professional photography monthly founded by Guangzhou Photographers Guild,which is China's first organization for professional photographers; in 1926,Pictorial Magazine of Good Companion founded by Wu Liande,a native of Taishan,Guangdong."The technique of taking photos serves as a key principle for education.Hence,any learned citizen shall master the basic knowledge of photography,[1]"said Zhang Yucang,editor in chief of Photography Magazine in the forewords.In this respect,most intellectuals dating back to the early dates of the ROC regarded photography as a crucial instrument among common people that propelled social changes in China and created awareness of the autonomous and independent Chinese nation.In 1920s,photography has seen increasing popularity and developments in China,leading to a large number of photo associations and exhibitions in major cities.Guangzhou-based Jing Society established in 1925 was one of the top three societies of photographers in the ROC together with Pekingbased Guang Society and Shanghai-based Hua Society.Lao Yanruo,member of Guang Society,and Lu Shifu and Guo Xiqi,members of Hua Society were well-known Cantonese photographers at that time.

 

Since most of these amateur photographers were men of letter and painters,they attached more importance to the "expressive"( 写意) function of photos rather than "rendering accurately"( 写 实) what the human eye would see as photo studios did."We recognize that photographs for reproduction are indeed useful,and we also recognize that this is photographs' conventional function.But fools like us want to distract from its conventional practice – to seek 'aesthetics' from photographs – so we have to open up a new path apart from the conventional one; sometimes we even take the bold steps to create socalled 'artistic photographs'[2],"said Liu Bannong,a Chinese pioneer of new culture in his publication in 1927,Bannong's Comments on Photography,the earliest monograph on art of photographic theories in China.That photography fell into the category of art was the predominant view of Chinese photographers in the ROC,encouraging the rise of a large of group of "expressive"photographers,with pinnacle of the unique "composite photography"technique created by Lang Jingshan.Chinese art photography in 1920s and 1930s was much on par with the European fine art photography in the late 19th century.They were both originated from no conviction toward photography and lack of understanding and research on ontology of media.Photo Secession organized by Alfred Stieglitz,an American photographer in early 20th century,worked for a seceding from the conservative photography attached to paintings.Similarly,even though art photography was the prevailing trend,some Chinese "Photo Secessionists"kept probing into the independent photographic language and aesthetics instead of swimming along with the current.Sha Fei and Guo Xiqi,two photographers from Canton,were among them.Their unique photographic practice blazed two different trails of life in South China and North China respectively.

 

After outburst of the War of Resistance Against Japanese in 1937,Sha Fei,a native of Kaiping,Guangdong,left Guilin,Guangxi province and headed for the front in North China.He joined the Eighth Route Army and founded the Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial .Zheng Jingkang,a native of Zhongshan,Guangdong went to Wuhan from Hong Kong.At first,he served as the head of Photography Studio,International Propaganda Dept.of the ROC government.He took many photos about how Chinese people resisted the Japanese aggressors and saved the nation,and exposed the atrocities of Japanese military in China.By end 1940,Zheng went to Yanan,and worked as photographer in the Propaganda Department of the General Political Department in the Eighth Route Army.Sha Fei and Zheng,together with other photographers from Canton,such as Shi Shaohua and Zhao Lie,cofounded the photographic propaganda system in the CPC,known as the "Red Photography"which has extended influence on the photographic pattern for propaganda since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

 

On October 8,1936,Lu Xun attended a woodcut exhibition in Shanghai,where he exchanged views with young people in a circle.A young Cantonese called Situ Chuan aside pressed shutter,and took the most famous photos of Lu Xun,a respectful Chinese author.It seems like a reproduction of that historical moment 24 years afterwards when a Cuban photographer Alberto Korda took the iconic image of revolutionary Che Guevara at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion.Photographers were often the "idol maker"in history.The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began with the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on July 7,1937.Later Situ Chuan,with Sha Fei as his pen name,published an article entitled Photography and Nation-saving in Guangxi Daily .He believes that "photos are weapons":"Photography accurately reproducing things we see.For this very reason,photos can impress people with the truest feeling.Moreover,with the science of photography,cameras can instantly capture everything,and we print thousands of copies of what we have captured.This is a feature that distinguishes it from other formative arts....As photography has excellent features referred to above,it is indeed one of the most powerful weapons for alarming people of China's national calamity."[1] In this short paragraph,Sha Fei made a pointed comment on three elements unique to photography:accurate reproduction,instant and reprinting.Sha Fei was engaged in art photography in the beginning,and he was also a member of Society of Black and White Photographs in Shanghai.However,he grieved that "all walks of life think this profession is merely an entertainment"in face of the crude world and tense situation.He explored the path of "using photography as a fighting weapon"regardless of obstacles from his family and friends,and even threat of divorce from his wife.He headed north from Guangdong to Shanghai,the front in North China,and finally the CPC revolutionary center in Yan'an.After the War,as he shot to death a Japanese doctor involved in his treatment out of insanity,he was executed.This photographer ended his short but legendary life.Among Sha Fei's "photographic weapons",we can see critical realism from "A Dead Man Half Beheaded",revolutionary romanticism from "The Back of a Sentinel Who Defends Motherland and White Clouds High in the Sky",classic heroism and collectivism from "Fighting on the Ancient Great Wall",journalistic professionalism from "Fighting Hand-to-hand and Battle in Village".Such "weapons"have been given the full play in propaganda media such as the Jin-Cha-Ji Pictorial founded by him,and gradually form the Xinhua News Agency Genre of Photography,with significant implications for China's photography in the second half of the 20th century.

 

Cantonese K.W.KWOK who moved from Guangdong to Shanghai,but he treaded southward after the War broke out,blazing a trail entirely different from that of Sha Fei.K.W.KWOK,born in 1896,left home for study in Shanghai at a young age.17-year-old K.W.KWOK started to work at foreign-funded companies,such as Evans & Sons,Edward,Ltd.and Kodak,and KMT Aviation Academy.At the age of 18,he began to take photos.In 1929,KWOK joined Hua Society in Shanghai,a wellknown society of expert photographers; in 1930,he published Nanjing Photo Album that included selected works.This album with inscription of Lin Sen,chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China,was presented to foreign friends as a national gift of Chinese culture.KWOK ever planned to create and publish a series of albums for photos taken in Qufu,Kunming,Yellow Mountain and Putuo,but this plan was terminated due to the War.His second album,Beautiful West Lake Scenery ,was finally published in 1947 in the name of Shanghai You Sheng Tour Group.Between 1934 and 1946 he has launched six solo photo exhibitions in Shanghai,Kunming,Nanjing and Hangzhou.As an enthusiast of travel photography,KWOK has traveled throughout the country as well as foreign countries such as India and Burma.His artistic attainment enjoyed a reputation among peers in his times.

 

Even though KWOK was a highly acclaimed "expert photographer at the early stage of China's art photography",he adopted straight photography in most of his works,judging from more than 5,000 negative films,some sketches and manuscripts maintained by his descendents,as well as his two albums.Light and composition in such works conformed to no conventional or popular pattern dating back to his times.Actually,his style somehow echoed with the pure photography advocated by Photo Secessionists such as Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen.Pure photography or straight photography refers to photography that attempts to depict a subject in sharp focus and detail,and in a natural approach.In his masterpieces Nanjing Photo Album ,all photos with architecture as the subject were taken with the camera placed on the side of the architecture.Against the background of a clear sky and surroundings,those photos resemble the solemn sense as classic portrait photography.If people appear in his photos,the relation between human and views maintains a peaceful tension.For example,in the photo Wuliang Hall in Linggu Temple ,a standing monk silently faces a shining ancient stele.This simple but true image can easily overwhelm a viewer with strong loneliness and emptiness as if one views Reading the Stele (《读碑窠石 图》) attributed to Li Cheng,painter of early Song dynasty.Even photos he took in Yunnan at wartime could not change his poised feature as a photographer.Maybe for K.W.KWOK,photography was a journey transcending time to reveal the true nature of the world.

 

For Sha Fei and K.W.KWOK,photography is a lifestyle; photography is a path.However,for these two people living in the same time and space,photography has represented two different lifestyles,two different paths,two different histories and two different worlds.

 

 

After 1949,Hong Kong and Macao became "extraterritorial enclaves"of mainland China and the only window for China to get in contact with the Western world.In particular,after rapid development in nearly three decades after World War II,Hong Kong has grown into an international metropolis where eastern and western cultures,economies,and politics intersect.Just like its urban development,Hong Kong photography in this very period was prosperous,diverse and inclusive.There were street-photographers focusing on people's livelihood such as Qiu Liang and Chen Ji,but there were also Salon photographers fascinated with pictorial charms like Chen Fuli and Qian Wanli.The most unique one was Fan Ho,formulated and being widely acclaimed for a light and shadow form composition that combined oriental pictorialism with Western abstractionism,and Meng Minsheng,a left-wing photographer who interpreted the revolution through staged photography with deliberately-set sceneries.Like two wings,these two photographers piloted Hong Kong photography to the top of the world stage.

 

Originally from Guangdong,born in Shanghai,and settled in Hong Kong in youthful age,Fan Ho and Meng Minsheng shared a similar biography with many post-war Hong Kongers.In a sense,Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s was a combination of Guangdong,Shanghai,and British colony.The mixed characteristics of Cantonese,Shanghai language and English culture brought unique feature of Fan Ho's photography language.Came from a wealthy businessman's family,Fan Ho got from his father a Rollei twin-lens camera when he was 13,and started his 70-year career in photography.When the 17-yearold Fan Ho went and settled in Hong Kong,he transplanted the aesthetical tendencies of the pictorial photography shaped in boyhood days in Shanghai onto the streets of Hong Kong,which was then ambitiously growing into a capital of the oriental world.The 50s and 60s of last century witnessed the adolescent period of Hong Kong's internationalization,and Fan Ho,who grew up with Hong Kong,also enjoyed an enviable youth.He entered Shaw Brothers as an actor and then film director with the title of "Prince of Photography",ended up to become the godfather of Hong Kong aesthetic erotic movie,but what he considered the most was still photography.

 

Even though Fan Ho's aesthetics of photography had been fettered in the contemplative style of the literati of Republic of China,in the face of the urban fabric when old and new was alternating,China and foreign country intermingling,he blended the traditional oriental landscape and Zen into the abstract expressionism and minimalism that were emerging in the West,sometimes adding a bit of surrealism,using buildings as valleys,ditches as trees and rivers,streets and lanes as lines,light and shade as brush and ink,and finally formed the socalled "Ho Aesthetics"photography,a very personal style with potent visual surprises.The most commonly used method in photography with "Ho's aesthetics"is to process the surfaces and lightings of urban architecture into Bauhaus-style geometric compositions,and sometimes a photo would be cropped like a traditional Chinese scroll painting or vertical axis painting.The characters would be precisely placed at the junction of geometric figures or lines as pin-points,transmuting the ordinary civic life and disorganized streets into a dramatic and narrative "life stage"."Sometimes I'd put aside the reality and leave a space for viewers to imagine.I like the viewers to use their own thinking to share with me the feeling of a photo.[1]"Said Fan Ho in an interview.The collection published two years before his death (2014) was named "The Living Theatre ".In the history of photography,a city and a photographer often bring out the best in each other,such as Eugene Atget and Paris,Stiglitz and New York,Josef Sudek and Prague,and now another pair should be added:Fan Ho and Hong Kong.

 

While Fan Ho was shooting Hong Kong's "visible"portrayals,Meng Minsheng at the 60s and 70s of the last century shot the other side,the "invisible"side of Hong Kong.The numerous images of Hong Kong "leftists"and his identity as a photographer have long been neglected by mainstream Hong Kong society until one year before his death (in 2006,Mong Minsheng,in hospital and coma,was awarded the Annual Photographer Gold Medal at the Lianzhou International Photography Festival).The early "leftist"and "rightist"in Hong Kong reflect only the opposition and separation of political groups affected politically and ideologically by the two parties,namely the KMT and the CPC,of China.When it went to the 1970s,influenced by the global left-wing ideological trend,community movements and social protests surged in Hong Kong,then a native "leftist"group against the colonial government and capital consortiums took shape and developed.Nevertheless,the mainstream public opinions in Hong Kong were not keen on political issues.Especially,the leftist group was disliked even more after the social unrest caused by the "June 7 Riot",which led to long-term repression and indifference on the leftist community.No wonder left-wing writers and artists like Meng Minsheng were concealed for most of the century.

 

When Meng Minsheng was still alive,he left tens of thousands of films with a complicated content that can be roughly divided into two categories:documentary of leftist activities and grass-root lives,portraiture,and stage photography.The most surprising are those shot in studio or theater with self-made backgrounds,staged revolutionary figures and ceramic hero dolls,and mimetic revolutionary scenes,also known as "Simulated Revolution"photography.In 1965,Meng Minsheng came back to visit his relatives in Guangzhou and saw the stylistic features of the African revolution played in the National Day parade,as well as the The Storm in Mountain Village ,a revolutionthemed Guangdong opera starred by Hung Sin-nui.Upon returned to Hong Kong,he invited seamen who had been to Africa,as well as actresses and props guns to imitate what he had seen in Guangzhou,in which the background cloth with revolution scenes was co-painted with a friend Zhong Wenlue.In the meantime,Meng Minsheng took his son,who was living in Guangzhou,to shoot a group photo of "Guangzhou Garden Views "in a park of Guangzhou,in which the characters turning their backs against the lens and staring alone at the slogans on bridges or pavilions.Quiet and beautiful.Outside the wall of revolution,he imagined revolution with his passionate visual games; inside,he captured the extreme calm of the stormy center.Passion and calm,it might be his own utopia of revolution created in photography.Stage Photography,ever since the 1970s when it was used by European and American artists such as Jeff Wall,Cindy Sherman,Bernard Faucon as creation means,has developed into one of the most important categories in concept photography in contemporary art.Meng Minsheng's "quasi-revolutionary"photography in the 1960s was by no means equivalent to the mandated propaganda in the mainland.Instead of publishing them for utilitarian purposes such as propaganda or exhibition,he shot those photos out of pure enthusiasm for the revolution so much so that when rediscovered many years later,those mildewed images were crowned by time,eventually.

 

 

During 1970s and 1980s,the "Second Wave of Globalization"after Second World War led by three economic organizations has reached its peak in western countries.Many Chinese people were involved.In addition to those living in Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan,most Chinese people who worked and lived in Europe and the United States were Cantonese-speaking immigrants from the Pearl River Delta.They represented another symbol of China other than "Red China"from the perspective of westerners.Among them,contemporary artist Tseng Kwong Chi found fame with his self-portrait series while Pok Chi Lau has taken photos of overseas Chinese for decades with approaches of anthropology and sociology.With different ways of expression,they both focus on photographic discussion on identity and culture shocks.In 1950,the connection between Hong Kong and Guangdong Province was severed,and it was isolated from the Mainland due to political system and Cold War.Both Pok Chi Lau and Tseng Kwong Chi were born in Hong Kong this year.Their families immigrated to Canada when they were children.As young adults they settled down in the US,and began their artistic career.

 

Since he studied in the US at the age of 19,Pok Chi Lau has visited Chinese people in American countries,and taken numerous photos in terms of portraiture and daily scenes.He has collected images,characters and literature in an approach of fieldwork in anthropology,and accumulated records on China and its people overseas in the process of globalization.In Lau's album Flow China ,he said:"In fact,there are two Chinas in the world,mainland China and overseas China....The first-generation immigrants from China – coolies,contracted Chinese workers,laundresses,servants,land reclamation peasants,peddlers,and vagrants – could have never expected the immigrant-centric clan,geographical and networking settlement and expansion overseas has reconstructed another 'China' on an alien land,yet it is a fragmented but huge ‘overseas China'.Conceptually,it carries the bloodline from mainland China,but in reality the community of overseas Chinese has formed a world distinctively independent from the motherland.In this 'overseas China',different groups of people have their own but distorted memory and experience about the motherland ; and their understanding,choice and adaption to Chinese values are far apart from the original values; there are vastly different dialects,dressing styles,daily necessities,customs,rituals and signs....[1]"The photography practice by photographer Pok Chi Lau,who is also overseas Chinese,is somehow how "I see the others".

 

Out of the anxiety towards identity,Tseng Kwong Chi chose "the other to see me".After he knew the news that China and the United States have established diplomatic relations on January 1,1979,he started the creation of his self-portrait series,East Meets West,that lasted a decade.Each photograph depicts Tseng in a traditional Mao suit,with a fake I.D.card clipped to his chest pocket and mirrored sunglasses,holding shutter release in his hand,and standing in front of the Statue of Liberty,Empire State Building,Eiffel Tower and so on.Tseng pressed the shutter himself to "shoot"himself.He defined himself as "an ambiguous envoy".Estrangement caused by the Cold War,culture shock and identity misplacement have all been included in this imaginary "other".And then he stood in front of those symbols of western civilization,allowing the camera as the eye of westerns to "see me".He was not only an envoy,but also a lost traveler,a Zen master in meditation,and a selfless soul whisperer.Each time he pressed the shutter,he hit both the others and himself,proposing him doubts to both the East and the West.

 

 

With the implementation of reform and opening up in China and the end of cold war in the 1980s~1990s,the boundary between two parallel markets and different economies were broken,starting up the third "economic globalization"as well as the surge of urbanization and consumerism with the largest scale ever in human history.Pearl River Delta,located at the critical point and intersection of the two worlds,will once again become the new experimental field of globalization.

 

Native Cantonese photographers and artists went wild in the boom and developed their commitment to the art of photography.One after another,they took up that most modern medium of art to express their thought and feelings about that age of surging advancement.Among the group of urban photography pioneers and experimenters is Zhang Haier,who took a series of black-and-white pictures of the Guangzhou street views which was showing signs of urbanization and divergence.He would physically step in his melancholy,sexy,and tensioned pictures.His crude and sharp photography is his means to release pent-up desire and depression in Southern Chinese cities in the early years of Reform and Opening-up.Liang Juhui,Cheng Shaoxiong,Lin Yilin and Xu Tan formed "Big Tailed Elephant Group"in Guangzhou,which is considered one key pioneers of "Chinese Dadaism".Their major media was video and photograph combined with installation and behavior art,which expanded the boundary and scope of Chinese visual arts.

 

This experimental field also attracted the attention from the west.Similar to the predecessor a hundred years ago,Greg Girard,a Canadian photographer,and Map Office (founded by Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix) took Hong Kong as the base and carried out their long-term shooting project for years.Greg Girard's record on the decline of Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong for 5 years (1987-1992),and the Map Office's imaging research on Pearl River Delta for 10 years (1996-2006) are qualified enough to become the outstanding cases of global imaging study at present.In the 21st century,the native-born Cantonese imaging artists of the new generation still adhere to the innovative and pragmatic spirit and continue to create their works on this land.Compared with the predecessors,they focus more on individual perspective and the application of open media.In the 21st century,the native Cantonese image artists of the new generation still adhere to the innovative and pragmatic spirit and continue to create their works on this land.Compared with the predecessors,they focus more on individual perspective and open media usage.For instance,Cao Fei,an artist born in Guangzhou,with the Pearl River Delta as his starting point,has been creating an array of photo and video works of fictional and virtual reality surrounding the alienation of the people caused by Chinese urbanization and globalization.His works include San Yuan Li,Cosplayers,Whose Utopia,La Town,Splendid River.Qiu,an artist born and lived in Guangdong,has since 2000 been shooting this land exists on which he exists:in the coarse-grained and gloomy pictures made from his 135 film,the Pearl River Delta is Daydream; in the misty and greyish images printed from 120 film that he began shooting in 2009,the Pearl River Delta is Miasma; in his more recent work Enning,with images of street views and wastes that he salvaged when roaming in old town of Guangzhou and photography devices that he made using coppersmith and porcelain backing technique seen in the old street of Ening,he brings the city's soul back to life… It is a "Traditional Cantonese Film"of most enduring affection recorded by a stubbo rn but silent local image recorder.

 

In 2016,the outbreak of a series of events including Brexit,the new American President Donald Trump's implementation of trade protectionism,European refugee crisis,frequent terrorist attacks in Europe and America,have predicted the rise of conservatism and populism in the West,as well as the surge of anti-globalization thought; the "Belt & Road Initiative"advocated by China,however,has become another turning point of globalization,as it proposes a brand new thought of globalization.Over the past years,Guangzhou,the starting point of Maritime Silk Road in the past,has once again become the collecting and distributing center of countries in Africa,South Asia and West Asia along the Belt and Road.With merchants and laborers of these countries gathering here,Guangzhou thus is nicknamed "Capital of the Third World".The photography project Xiaobei Road cooperated by Daniel Traub,an American photographer,and Wu Yongfu and Zeng Xianfang,Chinese street photographer who shoot for black African only by the Xiaobei Road ,has recorded over 25,000 portraits of African who stayed in Guangzhou.Compared the African portraits shot by Chinese photographers right before the highrise buildings of Guangzhou with the Chinese portraits shot by western photographers John Thomson et al in the same place 100 years ago,the beginning of photography history of Pearl River Delta has perfectly echoed with the end.Viewing Chinese from the European and American perspective and viewing African from the Chinese perspective,isn't this phenomenon perfectly reflecting the circulation of globalization?

 

"The type of consciousness the photograph involves is indeed truly unprecedented since it establishes not a consciousness of the being-there of the thing (which any copy could provoke) but an awareness of its having-been-there.What we have is a new space-time category:spatial immediacy and temporal anteriority,the photograph being an illogical conjunction between the herenow and the there-then.According to Rhetoric of the Image [1] Roland Barthes defined photography as a conjunction of new space and time that transcends its real noumenon,providing us a new possibility to interpret history - image as history itself.In this era of hypermedia,mankind is now constructing history fully with images."This image-centric memory technology system no longer relies on any subject,it is automatically generated,and at the same time it retains memory in a technical way with its automation; it is a memory technique,also a kind of backfire of image against human society."(Bernard Stiegler,Automating Society )[2]

 

In the case study of the changing photography history of the Pearl River Delta,we see that what photograph creates is a multidimensional,overlapping history:it helps us to draw aside the fog of history,but leaves us in a new mazee."Images are undoubtedly a historical element ...everything endowed with history has been given a life ...so do everything that has been endowed with image.[3]"Said Giorgio Agamben.Today,after photography being invented for 178 years,are we giving the image a new life,or the image giving us one?

 

 

 

Zeng Han

Curator

Special Exhibition of Guangzhou Image Triennial 2017