Faced with the suspicious eyes of the villagers, Wen Fang gave up explaining himself early. Instead of wasting time on meaningless confrontations, dive into more inspiration. He had now learned to choose the scenery into the deserted corner. In the wilderness of Shaanxi's countryside, on the edge of the edge, there is no curious onlookers, no interference from good deeds, and no vicious shouts.
Looking at his portfolio, you'd be mistaken for browsing an adventure blogger: drilling into old forests, wading through ponds, walking mountain roads, climbing trees, mosquito bites and scratches are commonplace. But he is actually a fashion blogger, and the challenge in the wilderness is not to "survive", but to "seek beauty". One of his most recent works was filmed in a ruin that had been abandoned for decades. The dilapidated mud hut was about to collapse at any moment, filled with the stench of the rainy season mud, and he himself was painted white and dressed as a plaster sculpture, lying down in the bright light, trying to express a decadent beauty.
Pictured| a fight with mosquitoes
The mountain mosquito was fierce, he was almost naked, and he was bitten all over his body. But he doesn't shy away from the potentially embarrassing parts of the backcountry. On the contrary, those dead branches and leaves, rotten mud and grass, flying insects, mosquitoes and flies are all realities that cannot be modified. The exquisite aesthetic is somewhat deceptive, and in the face of the camera, he prefers to come up with unreserved truth. Sincere, maybe too sincere.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" data-track="10" > heretics with long hair</h1>
Last month, Wen Fang took a few friends from different places to find him to shoot videos to eat at a restaurant in the county town. He booked a private room, thinking he could avoid a lot of gossip. However, as they crossed the front hall of the restaurant to enter the box, a middle-aged man at the next table who had already blown several bottles of wine looked at Wen Fang with strange eyes, shouting "You see he is a man and a woman", betting with each other and making obscene laughs.
"How can it be so excessive!" The friend said indignantly. Wen Fang waved his hand awkwardly to say don't care, he said that this is a situation that occurs every day, and it is not strange to see it. There are also often little boys who rush to him, look up and blurt out, "Are you a man or a woman?" "It's also unclear whether this is provocation or curiosity. In the two or three years since he returned to Dali County, Wen Fang would have caused all kinds of criticism everywhere he went.
Confused: "You're drawing, right?" ”
Mischievous: "He's a man, you see he doesn't have a chest." ”
Avoidance: "I'm afraid it's not crazy." ”
After all, in the countryside, you can easily seem strange. Even if it is just one less meal, it will cause the whole village to talk about things, not to mention that Wen Fang is the only man with long hair in the village.
In a way, he was used to being treated as a heretic. One summer in junior high school, he suddenly wanted to wear a pair of dark shorts to school. The shorts are tight and the high-rise design shows leg length. He thought it was a nice outfit, but when he got to school, all the eyes that came at him were like rocks, laughing at him, hitting him, and nailing him. Before class, a boy in the class leaned over, squeezed his eyebrows and shouted, "How do you dress like a personal demon?" ”
Sad? He felt more embarrassed. It was like in a sweltering tin house, he proposed to open a window when it was so hot, and everyone ignored him and said he was an idiot.
Wen Fang's father was a reticent carpenter, and her mother died of illness many years ago. Father sat with his head hanging down between the wood and the debris, working silently, day after day. The tables and chairs made are very stable and sturdy, and they are famous in the village. Once, Wen Fang revealed a large number of finished solid wood low-foot stools in the utility room in the video, painted scrawled and clumsy lines, such stools seemed a bit rustic to netizens.
Brodsky said that man is first an aesthetic animal and then something else. But here, in Dali County, Shaanxi Province, people eat first, and then the others. It is difficult for Wen Fang to explain to her father what beauty is and what creative design is, nor can she explain that the word "Wen" in the screen name is taken from Liu Wen and who Liu Wen is. Tacit understanding is that the father never asks, probably knowing that his son is making videos and can make money, but he has not seen what kind of video it is.
The only ones who can understand Wen Fang may be the two little sisters who are still in school. At present, they are on summer vacation, and they have great enthusiasm for Wen Fang's makeup style, often take the initiative to do model makeup audition, and will discuss together what kind of eyebrow shape is suitable for themselves. They sometimes jumped and ran to the river beach a few miles away to shoot, and seemed to understand the artistic shots that Wen Fang imagined, lying down, standing, playing with mud.
Pictured| the two sisters in Wen Fang's shot
Wen Fang said that the little sister is not completely regarded as playing the family, which is somewhat beautiful enlightenment. He also said that xiaomei has also recently learned to take pictures, and there is a group of ethnic style photos that she is in charge of. The other day he saw the little sister make clothes for Barbie dolls with some corner fabrics, and those styles are "very designed, and I think the little sister is also talented." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" data-track="101" > nearly famous</h1>
It is not appropriate to use "he" to refer to Wen Fang. From junior high school, he realized that gender norms were too rigid—boys could only wear pants, not skirts, and even shorts were an adventurous attempt. After the college entrance examination, he wanted to study fashion design, but his mother said that "tailoring is learned by girls", so he retreated to the second place to learn graphic design. In 2018, he began to do his own styling and shooting videos, he found that short hair restrictions were too much, and then grew long hair, defining himself as a genderless model.
At first, his goal was to become Liu Wen. Joseph Carr, the former director of the fashion magazine Jia Ren, once praised Liu Wen as "light loves her", and the light and shadow moved and changed on her face, as if the moon fell in the lake. Wen Fang's face is relatively square, the angle of the lower jaw is prominent, and the cheekbones are slightly convex. His eyebrows are the style of the Dunhuang Buddha statue (he happened to be doing a Dunhuang modeling video recently), the eyebrow spacing is narrow, the eyebrow distance is wide, the eyebrows are raised, and the natural sense of alienation. All in all, it looks very special. Because of his appearance, Wen Fang was beaten up when he was a child, bullied by the children of the same country, and his grandmother did not like him.
In July 2018, he taught himself everything in a 7-square-meter rental house in Xi'an. Watch makeup videos to learn contouring, highlight, paint eyeshadow, watch movies to learn eye contact, watch supermodel variety shows to learn steps, keep tens of thousands of "worth learning" photos in the phone, learn editing on the Windows xp computer, and save months of money to buy a Canon 750d camera.
He uploaded a large number of videos of makeup and styling, some of which were modeled after Liu Wen's work. By the end of 2019, "rural boys imitating Liu Wen" was on the hot search. A number of media rushed to report on the "ambition" of this rural boy, and the words implied contempt for "the spirit is commendable but the self is not measured".
This hot search made Wenfang almost famous. Even the neighbor who lived opposite the commissary pointed to the news of the local satellite TV and said, "Oh, you're on TV." Most people clicked into Wen Fang's account out of curiosity, some encouraging him, some scolding him for being perverted. Hot business cooperation ensued, and even pan ads came to the door.
He felt strange, as if he were still in a maze of rigid gender norms and monotonous aesthetic paradigms. People still look at him the same as the summer in shorts, "I can't catch this heat." ”
Another "near-fame" incident was that someone privately said that a mall in Jinan had hung a photo of him imitating a chanel perfume advertisement on the façade for half a year.
He doesn't know how to react and defend the right to portraiture? Or kindly remind the other person? Later, the mall removed the poster without mentioning anything. He consoled himself that his styling and shooting standards were high enough to be fake.
After returning to his hometown, he stopped imitating, in other words, his creation changed from intuition to self-awareness.
Perhaps the countryside is more inclusive than the city, the dense forest river beach can bring him a constant creative impulse than the traffic, and has successively made oil painting series, mermaid series, mountain spirit tree monster series, many friends say that his works are reminiscent of Ren Hang.
Some of these works are selfies |
Next, Wen Fang talked with great interest about the latest issue of the work, inspired by the movie "The Last Emperor". To be precise, it is a scene that ordinary people will not notice: on the cruise ship of the lotus pond, several old concubines shake a fan in one hand and hold their glasses in the other hand to peek at Puyi who is nursing on the shore. He loves this ghostly peeping perspective.
It took more than a week to prepare props and costumes, a big production. In terms of props, the reddish-brown door frame comes from the sheepfold, the light blue window frame comes from the firewood pile, and the bright green thatch behind the doors and windows is freshly dug. As for the pile of thorny weeds, you may not think that it is actually imitating red coral. The materials for clothing are also picked up, such as waste sheets, cheap colored cloth, the golden face of the reflector, and even the melon seed bag is turned over to silver shining epaulettes.
These seemingly useless garbage have a valuable aesthetic significance in Wen Fang's eyes. They can be layered in sets, can be made into gorgeous backless skirts, and can be matched with futuristic shapes. He's really talented.
In this video, he first tries a narrative conception, using a montage technique to show the enlightenment of a deep palace abandoned concubine like a dream. The clip done on the phone is slightly rougher, but it has also had 1.36 million views, the second video to have been played over a million times. Many people left messages suggesting that he go abroad to study fashion design, but further study means spending a lot of money, almost delusional.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" data-track="102" > swim until the water turns blue</h1>
To describe the current situation of Wen Fang's life in one sentence: there is inspiration, but poor; poor, but inspired.
Three years on, he's still using that Canon camera. Recently, this entry-level camera does not have a wide-angle lens, the zoom effect is not good, and many pictures cannot be presented. Netizens always complain that his production is too rough, that is because his old computer has not been bought after it is broken, and the mobile phone is also old. Advertising income can basically sustain life, do not have to eat old. But there is not much spare money to engage in creation, and it can be said that half of the reasons for finding beauty from the garbage heap are "to create conditions without conditions."
Wen Fang's real name is Qu Chuang, "Go Break".
In 2012, he was tricked into his first job after graduation in Xinjiang. I thought I had seized an opportunity to go out and make money, but the result was to work as a black worker. It was a fitness equipment store, and the boss set an outrageous sales target for the employees, not only without pay, but also lost money. After doing it for two months, Wen Fang did not get a penny, and lost a thousand yuan.
After escaping the trap and returning home, my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In order to treat, the family was completely hollowed out, and it was only maintained for more than half a year. In the last few hours, he carried his thin and disfigured mother back to the earthen house of his hometown and watched her breathe in his arms. Probably because the mental blow was too big, he immediately went to Xi'an alone, worked like crazy, worked as a waiter, doorman, cosmetics teller, and couldn't make any money, only felt tired.
One day in elementary school, it suddenly rained heavily, and there were no rain boots at home, so my mother braved the rain to send Wen Fang a pair of old women's leather shoes. The sole is very thick and somewhat waterproof. "These shoes are ugly." "It's okay, people can't see it." The mother turned around and went back to work. After school, Wen Fang made sure that her classmates had left, and then she rushed home with her shoes that didn't fit.
After slowly adjusting his condition, after so many years of wandering on the edge of the city, he was glad that he still maintained a keen sense of beauty.
When it comes to painting, music, literature, etc., it is natural to say that this is not a monopoly that the rich can monopolize, and that ordinary people and the poor can create and enjoy it; but when it comes to fashion, many people may hesitate. In fact, isn't clothing also an art of body writing?
Wen Fang admits that she is stupid and often finds it difficult to describe imaginary pictures and scenes in words. But body expression is more direct than language. Rather than saying beautiful things to package ideas, he is more concerned about how to actually make things and say that what everyone sees is what they see. For example, the idea of non-sexism, he also believes that as long as he is good enough, he can naturally have an echo in society.
In 2020, Wen Fang is trying to adapt to the novel rhythm between fashion weeks and various shooting invitations. In June, a group of photographs in collaboration with photographers in mountain streams was adopted by Vogue, Italy. In July, he completed a gender-free theme shooting in Hangzhou. In September, Chengdu May Park Gallery exhibited a group of his modelling works. In November, I went to Shenzhen Fashion Week, but unfortunately I missed the model interview because I was not familiar with the road conditions, so I had to be a photographer for my friend and take a tidbit.
Since the beginning of this year, he has participated in an online variety show that competes in dressing, and has appeared on the inside page of the independent magazine "An". In October, he is also ready to be invited to Shanghai Fashion Week.
All the suffering of the idealist is rooted in a great rift between what should be and what it really is. Some people have destroyed their will in the cracks, and others are sure that they can find a way to let go in the cracks. In a documentary to be released, Yu Hua said that when he was a child, he and his friends often went to the sea to swim, and the water in his hometown of Haiyan was yellow. But in school, the textbook said that the sea was blue, and he often thought: Why can't I see the blue? One day, he swam a long distance, thinking: I'm going to swim until the water turns blue.
Stubborn? Wen Fang is also so stubborn. He likes to photograph night scenes, perhaps containing reasons for the greater sense of security at night, and because night is a natural light-absorbing version, it can make the courtyard where all kinds of debris look cleaner and the focus of the picture is more concentrated. As soon as the spotlight hit down, it seemed that Wen Fang itself was glowing. One of the nights, it suddenly rained heavily in the middle of the filming. He thinks it's good to rain, people walking in the rain is also very beautiful, can't stop, he has to keep walking, until the rain stops, the sky is bright.
- END -
Written by | Wu Rongxin