Reporter | Lin Zi people Edit | Yellow Moon
In 2010, photographer Liu Xiangcheng and art critic and curator Karen Smith were invited to compile a collection of Photographs on Shanghai Themes for the Shanghai Enterprise Joint Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. According to Liu Xiangcheng's recollection, this task has developed step by step from the initial collection of Shanghai pictures to the use of pictures to sort out and tell the history of Shanghai, "If you only do picture collection, in fact, there will not be a lot of substantive content, I know that amateur photographers can shoot things are very limited, but it is better to review the history of Shanghai is interesting." In the end, they handed over the answer sheet "Shanghai: Portrait of a Great City 1842-2010" (hereinafter referred to as "Portrait of a Great City"), and the entire photography set spans more than 100 years of Shanghai's history, outlining the past and present life of Shanghai from the opening of the port (1842) to the world expo.
On the occasion of another important historical node in Shanghai, the 30th anniversary of the development and opening up of Pudong New Area, Liu Xiangcheng launched a new large-scale album" Shanghai: Portrait of a World City (hereinafter referred to as "Portrait of a World City"). Since founding the Shanghai Center of Photographic Arts in 2015, he has been committed to documenting and interpreting Shanghai with images. In "Portrait of a World City", Liu Xiangcheng compiled 141 works by well-known photographers at home and abroad, divided into five chapters: "Spring Has Arrived", "Entering a New Era", "Innovative City", "Humanistic Life" and "Urban Renewal", from urban landscape, humanistic ecology to economic development and people's life, recording various pictures and vivid moments in Shanghai from 1991 to 2021.
Seven years ago, Liu Xiangcheng came to Shanghai to settle down, and began to measure the city with the eyes of residents during his daily walks. He notes that, unlike many other cities with a colonial history, Shanghai's old architecture reflects a rare multiculturalism — in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, european and American people brought the most fashionable and cutting-edge architectural designs to Shanghai. "I think this has opened the eyes of Shanghainese people. Shanghainese know that we've seen the best, and we want the best. In Liu Xiangcheng's view, Shanghainese people have always had the ambition to "be the best city in the world" in their subconscious. At the present 30 years of pudong development, the rapid development of the city has continued the "cosmopolitanism" that was once silent, and restored its vision of a "world city" – where the world's best talents and ideas have once again converged.
Liu Xiangcheng said that the album shows how Shanghai has been pushed to a new stage. A set of photographs in the album provides a visual representation of the astonishing changes in Shanghai during this period: photographer Lu Jie took one photo on the Bund in the 1980s and another at the same location more than a decade later. At this time, the flat Lujiazui in the previous picture has been completely transformed, and the Oriental Pearl Tower, Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai World Financial Center, and the Shanghai Center, the world's second tallest building under construction, have continuously broken through the limits of the Shanghai skyline and become an urban spectacle and visual symbol that Shanghai cannot ignore, in strong contrast with the "old Shanghai" on the Puxi side.
"The good thing about pictures is that they make the viewer think, of course, it depends on how you combine the pictures," Liu Xiangcheng said, "I want the pictures to tell people what life is like in the city." "Unlike its predecessor, Portrait of a Great City, Portrait of a World City is more of an essay about Shanghai's experience over the past 30 years than a visual history." I'm not trying to capture history in this book, I'm trying to document what's happening in Shanghai today. I feel like the book is more like an essay, documenting the moments of life I've seen over the past seven years, and the new concept of 'world city'. ”
When describing the city with pictures, Liu Xiangcheng gives the most attention to the people in the city. As he noted in 1976, the gradual relaxation of Chinese body language heralded a new era in China, and he found that the great changes in Shanghai over the past 30 years were also reflected in the changes in people's looks and manners and clothing. The book contains a photograph of designer Jiang Qiong'er striding through the exhibition hall, capturing the moment when her eyes met. In another photo, the photographer photographs young female collectors visiting the gallery. In Liu's view, people's confident steps and eyes reveal a body language and mental outlook that was rare even a decade ago, revealing the wealth level and ambition of Shanghai's elite.
Perhaps the most moving part of the book is the daily life of ordinary people in the city. One of Mr. Liu's most impressive photographs is one taken in 2010: two Shanghai uncles eating around a small table next to the stairs on Qiaojia Road in the old city of Xiangxiang, and a tanuki cat crouching on the stairs and looking up from the rice bowl in front of it. "People of different generations face different problems, and housing is certainly one of them. Although the reform and opening up was in full swing in the early 1990s, some living conditions and the physical environment (for some people) remain the same. ”
Liu Xiangcheng believes that compared with the photographer, the author of the atlas puts forward higher requirements for objectivity and the grasp of the overall situation in a sense, "When shooting, it is you who press the shutter, you will feel that it is too close to the work, and the personal color of the work created is too strong." But as a picture editor, you want to tell a story with pictures, and in this case you will think about why you should put these pictures together, rather than just thinking about personal interests. He hopes to tell the story of "why Shanghai is a world city" through "Portrait of a World City", so he visited many photographers and drew inspiration from their works, "For example, photographers see Lujiazui, a world city must have a financial center, how can the 24-hour trading of foreign exchange represent a global city?" I thought those images were important, so I asked the photographer to go back and shoot again. ”
For Liu Xiangcheng, learning about China is actually a process, and without the experience of visiting China in the 1970s, it may be difficult to read the expressions of Chinese in a picture. This may be the difference between him and some foreign photographers who photograph contemporary China—the way they look at China may have a well-intentioned curiosity, but many times kindness alone is not enough, and understanding the local society, culture, and people is more critical. "It's good to have an opinion, but having a thoughtful opinion isn't that simple." He said.