In 2015, a seemingly unremarkable black-and-white photo was auctioned at Christie's for 375,000 yuan.
A year later, the photographer who photographed this masterpiece drove the crane fairy away;
Left a world of fame, 280 international photography competition awards, and more than 30 "erotic tertiary films"...
His name is He Fan, maybe everyone feels strange to this name,
But if you mention his works "Jade Futon" and "Night Passion", many people will suddenly understand and smile shyly.
He Fan is the only character in Chinese erotic films who can be called a master.
However, aside from this identity, he is still a Chinese photographer known internationally as "Eastern Bresson";
The forgotten "generation of grandmasters" who created the first street photography in Hong Kong...
"There are no masters in the Chinese photography world, only one named He Fan."
Once upon a time, He Fan's name represented the legend of the Chinese photography industry.
Under his lens, the freehand and blank beauty of traditional Chinese aesthetics,
In the interweaving of light and shadow, it transforms into an oriental dream that resembles ink smudge.
The artistic beauty in the Tang poems and Song poems was injected into the lens by him, and the composition was poetic and picturesque——
The silver moon hung high, pale and cold, misty, warm and hazy.
A flat leaf boat, three or two boat passengers, dived into the shade of midnight, stirring a pool of broken silver.
He Fan is very sensitive to light and shadow, and his photography often breaks the stereotypical style,
Using natural light and geometric figures and lines formed by the building, the composition with a sense of cinema is portrayed:
A window, through the silhouette of the character to present a self-evident sense of story, like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" as imaginative;
He also makes good use of the combination of virtual and real, using multiple exposures to create abstract works where reality and fantasy intersect.
The elongated, compressed human body, the distorted perspective, the world becomes the stage of his narrative, and the picture is as strange as Dalí's illusion:
Dramatic composition, stunning light, and magnificent poetry have achieved He Fan's new style of photography that transcended the times.
But what really made him famous in history was the life of the people in Hong Kong in the 60s;
Those nameless stories about the "little people" —
"Hong Kong Memoirs", "Life Theater", "Yesterday Hong Kong" trilogy.
"Although we live on two sides of Hong Kong: the bright side and the dark side, we are all the ants of the times after all."
Ho Fan's lens is "sharp", cutting through the rough asphalt of Hong Kong's underclass and reflecting the most realistic market conditions.
The boatman has a bamboo pole on his shoulder, picking out the light and dark, and the children who grew up in the estate are born against the light.
Prosperity and ruin intersect, light and shadow mixed;
The palatial skyscrapers and the damp and narrow pigeon buildings are connected to each other but are separated from each other.
The Hong Kong in his photographs is poetic, and under the beauty, it also reveals compassion for Cangsheng.
Even though the night is barren and the road is long, there is always a beam of light that is clear for them.
Huge buildings, majestic vistas, almost occupy the entire length of the picture;
In contrast, the people of the city are like ephemerals.
However, the humble miniature of the world is focused and becomes a magnifying glass through the world, and the smaller it is, the greater it is.
He Fan used documentary lenses to carve a corner of reality;
It also turned this moment into a timeless and beautiful epic, leaving a precious era mark on Hong Kong for future generations.
The famous director Wu Yusen once commented on He Fan's photography:
"From his works, we can see the warmth, kindness, beauty and simplicity of human beings, not taking away a cloud but leaving a brilliant silhouette in a dashing manner."
And his artistic language that focuses on the underclass society also starts from his growth experience...
In 1933, He Fan was born in Shanghai to a family of rich people.
When he was a child, his parents often went out to do business, and when he was bored, he soaked in the theater all day long, deeply influenced by the art of light and shadow.
When he was in middle school, his father gave him a Brownie camera that was the most novel at that time, and He Fan loved it and carried it with him everywhere he went.
At the age of 13, he took a street scene at dusk on the Bund and won the first prize in a photo contest.
The small lens has since opened up the world of He Fan.
A few years later, Ho Fan moved to Hong Kong with his family, and he was also admitted to the Department of Literature at the University of Chinese, Hong Kong.
Influenced by Hugo's Les Misérables, Dickens's novel, the Italian film The Bike Thief... and other influences of literary and artistic works,
He Fan was fascinated by the struggle of the little people in these works against the tragic life.
He also began to capture the vitality of the grassroots class in every inch of black and white light and shadow, which was self-exalting and tenacious.
He Fan took a camera to "sweep the streets" in Hong Kong, observing the ferrymen at the ferry, moving goods, and the busy scenes at the docks;
Listen to the three sisters and six wives sitting at the door of the alley gossiping, watching children and cats explore the downtown as a playground...
Sometimes in order to achieve the most perfect and subtle effect of the picture, he squatted on the dock from early morning to evening, and finally waited for a coachman to enter the painting, which constituted his most heartfelt picture -
"Everything is like a divine arrangement, I just need to press the shutter at the right moment, this is my 'decisive moment'."
From the bustling streets to the lonely alleys, he wanders in the ever-changing light, recording the sorrows and joys of sentient beings, condensing a moment into eternity.
"I am not qualified to talk about caring, fraternity and compassion, I just want to present the real living conditions of the people in Hong Kong."
I really like the grassroots spirit of the little people who clench their teeth and strive to get upstream. ”
These works made He Fan, who was only 27 years old, win the "World Photography Ten Masters" selected by the American Photographic Society for eight consecutive years;
He was also listed among the 12 most influential Asian photographers along with Araki Jingwei and Moriyama Avenue, and was famous in the world for a time!
However, just a few years later, these glories and honors came to an abrupt end...
At the most prestigious time, He Fan did not choose to continue on the road of photography;
The flickering light and shadow of his childhood dragged his destiny towards him.
At the age of 32, he put down his beloved camera and turned to the film industry.
When he first entered the film industry, he did a field note at Shaw Film Company, ran a dragon suit, and because of his handsome appearance, he starred as a Tang monk in the 1965 version of "Journey to the West".
But he is not satisfied with appearing on the screen, he wants to become the "dream maker" behind the screen -
"I like Truffaut in the French New Wave, Fellini in Italy, Ingmar Bergmann in Sweden. I'm obsessed with that kind of person, and I dream of making art films. ”
With a yearning for art films, He Fan, who is nearly 40 years old, finally waited for the opportunity of independent directors to shoot "Blood Love", "Last Night Stars Last Night Wind", "Away"... and many other literary and artistic films.
Among them, "Departure" also won the Best Film Award at the British International Film Festival that year.
It is a pity that literary and art films have always been niche, not popular, and the box office is dismal.
Subject to practical factors such as box office and production costs, He Fan had to compromise with the film company.
In desperation, he took over the filming of "Jade Futon", "I Am Crazy for Qing", "Extreme Temptation"... And many third-level films to seek profits.
Unlike the vulgar films that are nudist and large-scale, He Fan hopes that his lens can always maintain his pursuit of art.
Deeply engaged in humanistic photography for many years, He Fan has a profound insight into human nature;
On the big screen, he once again focuses the camera on the deepest desires of human nature.
He deconstructs the pictures that express lust, and uses hazy and ambiguous choreography and empty mirrors to form a "painterly" lens language, presenting a beautiful erotic film like a literary film.
"Ukiyo Style" has also been selected as one of the "Masterpieces of Oriental Classical Cinema" in the German World Film Yearbook.
The world was amazed that He Fan could make such a high-level film so artistic, but he was troubled by the fact that his creation was more and more deviated from the original intention.
"In addition to the similar shooting style between Bresson and me, the encounters are also very similar, he loves movies very much, and he originally wanted to be a director.
But the medium of film not only can't make him have a better performance, but it restricts him, so he leaves the film circle. ”
Leaving has also become the only way for him to get out of the whirlpool of public opinion.
He Fan, who was more than half a hundred years old, traveled to the United States, but he did not pick up the camera there again and take pictures of exotic street scenes.
Instead, it repeatedly rubbed the old photographs brought from Hong Kong, as if scrutinizing the treasures.
Those vivid years are gone after all, and they can only be remembered in an inch of photos.
On June 19, 2016, 84-year-old He Fan passed away peacefully accompanied by his family, leaving his last black-and-white photo of his life.
Recalling the past before his death, he summed up his work this way: "In fact, I prefer black and white, and color is not so suitable for my world.
Black and white give me a distance, a distance from real life. Real life is colorful, and black and white seem to be pulled out of a little.
I love black, black as a force, so great, so mysterious, as if it were a force that could dominate the world. ”
Expose the years in black and white, freeze the eternal in an instant, and sprinkle the afterglow on the world.
I hope that in the eyes of future generations, He Fan's identity as a photographer will not be buried again;
He was in a drunken dream of fireworks wind and moon, and it was also the stars last night and the wind last night.
Image Source/Network
Author, Editor/ Cat North and South
Responsible Editor/ Honey
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