I think many people don't know that the Tang monk who played in the old version of Journey to the West is a photographer and a director! He is He Fan, and recently I saw some of his photos about Hong Kong memories, and I was attracted by his works, and then I happened to get to know the author and found it.
He Fan in Journey to the West
Ho Fan (8 August 1933 – 19 June 2016), born in Shanghai, moved to Hong Kong in 1949 and studied at New Asia College, Chinese University in Hong Kong. Internationally renowned photographer, film actor and director, he is the "grandmaster of a generation" who pioneered street photography in Hong Kong.
How handsome he fan was when he was young!
In 1958, he broke with the traditional style of conformity with a new style of photography, and between 1958 and 1965, he won the title of The World's Top Ten Photographic Artists organized by the Photographic Society of America for eight consecutive years. In the 1950s and 1970s, he won 267 consecutive awards in international photography competitions and wrote books such as "Street Photography Series" and "Modern Photography Appreciation".
In the 1960s, he worked as an actor at Shaw Brothers Film Company, participating in the famous films "No Love", "Journey to the West" and "Blue and Black", among which he was best known for playing Tang Monk; then he entered the film industry as a director, and in 1970, with the experimental "Fan" Yang Weikang City and the Berlin Film Festival, he directed more than 20 films, active in the Hong Kong film circle in the 70s and 80s, including "Spring in Denmark" and "Young Master in the Air", mostly aesthetic literary films, until he retired to the United States in the 1990s.
Interestingly, such a serious, simple, and even somewhat paranoid photographer who insists on photographing the "everyday life" of Hong Kong has a real career in filmmaking, or more precisely, erotic films. In 1961, at the age of 24, Ho joined shaw films. Initially as a field reporter, he later became an actor, but mostly a supporting role. In 1972, he became a director and directed 29 films, which were basically erotic films.
On June 19, 2016, He Fan died of pneumonia in a hospital in San Jose, California, USA.
The master is gone, and the work lives on. Finally leave the master's personal website, this is a tribute!
A person from entering a city to settling,
They are destined to be influenced by the air, soil, and things around them and put into emotion.
Born in Shanghai, Mr. He Fan has many works in his life, not only a well-known master of oriental photography but also a director of many films, and even participated in some roles, and his experience from childhood to adulthood is very legendary.
After moving to Hong Kong with his family as a teenager, he spent almost the rest of his life there, and it can be said that Hong Kong has made him a success, and he has also brought the Hong Kong spirit of that era to the world.
When he was young, he received his father's first Brownie camera, and it was at that time that he became fascinated by photography. Secretly using the bathroom as a darkroom at night, painting and taking pictures, going to various remote corners and suburbs far from home, there is no little bit of the rich second generation "should look".
He was not so much an old gentleman, but he was more like a very talented boy.
Ho Fan
When he arrived in Hong Kong as a teenager, he may have been just recording the streets at first, and then he himself has been in it and become part of his work. He would often wait in the same place for days for a perfect shot, just waiting for the right time, the right person, and the right "coincidence."
He had descended from the Mid-Levels McDonald's Road Central, carrying a camera, into narrow streets, steaming tapas vendors and crowded alleyway crowds.
Misty with smoke, grassroots, disadvantaged groups, and all sentient beings in front of them, the lives of these little people express Hong Kong as the most precious and unforgettable in his view. Those who are trying to survive, those wandering animals on street corners, the docks and stations where people come and go, and all kinds of sorrows and joys and fireworks in the 50s and 60s have been frozen.
He wants to be in accordance with his heart
Whether it is right or wrong, it is to wait for the light, wait until the mood of the feeling is in harmony, and wait for a sense of compositional rhythm in his eyes, as if every element of the picture is a note, and the whole work is a piece of his music.
Because most of his documentary works on the streets of Hong Kong and pay attention to the contrast between light and shadow, people often evaluate him as the Bresson of the East, but I have always believed that the most tense part of him is some implicit Chinese aesthetics in the work, and this deep oriental aesthetic makes the work ooze a more local national texture.
For example, for the treatment of the blank space, the ancient poetry and painting mood can also be expressed in the deep alleys of the contemporary city, which is the Chinese story he tells at the moment when everyone's eyes are on the West, which is also the earliest aesthetic enlightenment of the new era from its own culture in the East at that time.
He also has a lot of excellent color works, but he seems to prefer black and white, and perhaps black and white are more suitable for expressing his inner world.
Black and white gave him a sense of distance, a distance from reality, from life, and this sense of distance was very important to him.
There is no doubt that real life is colorful, and black and white seem to pull it out, leaving only the length of time for the viewer to think, the depth of the silence, so that people can resonate with him across distances.
I love black, which is a symbol of strength, with dominance. ”
With the geometric beauty in the gaps of the urban framework, He Fan's own visual language was gradually formed in those years.
Classical Chinese aesthetics pays attention to the beauty of the artistic conception, the birth of virtual reality, the realm of self and the realm of no self, and in his works it can often be seen that this kind of artistic conception that goes deep into the bone marrow, the creation of foreign teachers, the source of the heart, and the image outside the image. In particular, the following works were made by combining double exposure with his own cut-and-paste film ".
For the secondary creation of cutting, editing and the use of software in the later years, he understands it this way: "Like movies, photos can also determine their own life and death, this side is dead, that side is alive, then subtract 'dead'.
Poor indeterminate river bones, like people in deep dreams
The really good picture is not in the camera, but in yourself, in your eyes, in your brain, in your heart, not in the cold machine. ”
Fortunately, the China of that era was so poetically recorded by him, he sought inspiration in poetry and song, and used a variety of film post-processing methods to create artistic beauty in the darkroom, opening up a photographic precedent for Chinese aesthetics.
His emotions for his own works are also complex, many later works are full of creativity and mental strength, and the second creation comes from his own inner inspiration and feelings, but what many people can't imagine is that the moments that he captured in the most ordinary way in the early days were more missed by him in his later years, and many years later he still read: More than fifty years later, the most loved in my heart is still this 1954 "Sunset Journey".
The sun is far away, what is the world
"People's interpretations of the same thing at different stages are not the same, and the understanding is no longer the original understanding."
Some simple things are more profound, and carefully crafted ones may stop at the level of technique.
Whether it is the Hong Kong tertiary films he directs or the roles he participates in, you can see his artistic achievements, even erotic films are extremely beautiful, and he is always doing only himself.
The empathy and touch that all this brings to us may be because the hearts of these "everyone" are not only looking at the world, but also the sadness and joy of the entire nation behind them.
The phrase that Mr. Ho Fan often hangs on his lips comes from Balzac:
Art is nothing but moving.
Well, about He Fan first talk about this, I will come up with a video to show He Fan's portfolio, so that everyone can watch and learn well, hoping to arouse your interest.
Here to remind you, you can pay attention to me, so that you can track down He Fan's works later!