If you compare your 30 years of photography to mountaineering, the sweaty climbing process can be described as arduous. But life is bitter and happy. As you climb up the mountain path step by step, you will see different scenery along the way, and when you climb to the top of the mountain and look at the vast world, you can get a unique visual and spiritual enjoyment.
--Liu Weibing
Around 1987, on the campus of Chinese Min University, students competed to buy meat buns. When I was in college, because there were no shooting conditions, most of the images were only left in memory.
Mountaineering requires looking at the goal and persevering upwards. Occasionally, I should stop and look back at the road I have traveled, and look forward to the road ahead. My documentary photography book published last year, "Photographic Practice Notes: A Journalist's 30 Years of Recording and Thinking", is the result of looking back and summarizing. The 30 years of experience are condensed into six chapters, nearly 200,000 words, and more than 300 pictures.
The book has been on the market for more than a year and has produced a good response in the society. For a long time, it has been at the top of the sales list of photographic books in JD.com and Dangdang, and has been reprinted many times in a row. Photography should stand the test of history and readers, and the photos and words in the book can be loved by many readers, which makes me a photographer from youth to middle age, from black hair to almost bald.
In 1988, Nanjing, a little girl with a back hand under the bridge. After 30 years, the photos sparked enthusiasm for the little girl. Photographs are the product of a combination of photographer records and reader viewing.
Mr. Liang Heng, a famous essayist and former deputy editor-in-chief of People's Daily, suggested that after many years as a photojournalist, I should always write a book on photojournalism. Many friends have also made such suggestions. Think about it quietly, after all, I am the first batch of undergraduate graduates majoring in photojournalism after the reform and opening up, and I have been reporting on the front line of interviews for many years, and I should also summarize the profession of photojournalists. So he began to consult and organize the graphic materials, and successively wrote more than 200,000 words of collated drafts. Later, the interview was too busy to take care of, and it dragged on for nearly 10 years.
In 1990, in Lanzhou, Gansu Province, a foreign vintage car rally team arrived, arousing the curiosity of locals.
Entering the beginning of 2019, I opened the calendar and suddenly found that I had been engaged in photography for 30 years. The years are like shuttles, the images are left behind, and the wind and rain of the past 30 years have turned into countless large and small pictures, engraved in the memory of youth. A strong desire urged me to open the dusty draft again, reorganize the experiences and insights of those photographs, and write a new chapter. Photography needs inspiration and time precipitation, time drags on, the accumulated shooting experience and thinking are also enriched.
Flatbed tricycles on West Chang'an Avenue in Beijing in 1993.
Photography is a semi-manual task, and sorting out information is also a hard task. Photographic interviews for decades, I have experienced thousands of reports at home and abroad, and experienced many major events at home and abroad. I have traveled all over the country, photographed nearly 100 countries and regions, left about a million pictures, published tens of thousands of works, and filled half a bookcase with newspaper clippings using pictures.
To this end, I flipped through the old yellow film from the box, consulted hundreds of thousands of digital photos on the hard disk, flipped through hundreds of thousands of words of personal diaries and notes, and hundreds of self-media graphic works and photographic theory articles. Re-reading these old photos and texts is a happy memory and a rethinking.
At the end of 1995, the Preparatory Committee of the Preparatory Committee of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region closed in Beijing, and Li Ka-shing, Chow Nam and Fok Ying-tung (from left to right) watched the performance at the gala dinner.
In 1996, at the Ganzhou Railway Station in Jiangxi Province, the old man who came from the mountains saw the train for the first time and excitedly went forward to touch the carriage.
For the first time in the late 1970s, my father allowed me to take pictures with my family's seagull camera, and the time I learned to take pictures myself was about the same as the reform and opening up. It can be said that I came with a camera and followed the reform and opening up. In the 1980s, I was in the journalism department of Chinese University with a seagull SLR camera and learned black and white photography from my teacher, and went into a darkroom to develop photos. After working at Xinhua News Agency, I dealt with cameras and photos every day, and ran around various news interviews. At the beginning of the 21st century, film cameras were replaced by digital cameras, and time and time again, they were engaged in intense current political reporting, and now they often use mobile phones to record daily life. For decades, holding the camera, I sat on the high-speed train, traveling through the rapid flow of time and space, feeling the flow of the times.
In 1996, Shanxi Jingle Kangjiahui Middle School. In the morning of minus ten degrees, students were photographed through a hole in the window. At that time, I was thinking not only about the composition, but about the hardships of children reading.
In the spring of 1996, in Fuping County, Hebei Province, villagers watched a performance in Beijing sending a play to the countryside. By adjusting the aperture, I recorded the foreground, mid-shot, and background layeredly to create a grand atmosphere of the scene.
"The guards are one of the few journalists in the photography world who come from a scientific class, with sharp eyes, sharp brains, and fast legs. Catching up with the hot new era, he went deep into life, quick thinking, wandered between street news and major events, and left many image archives for society with diligence and thinking. Xie Hailong, a famous photographer who has run through social news together, said.
In addition, Xu Zugen, the veteran leader of the photography department of Xinhua News Agency and president of the China Press Photography Society, said in a congratulatory speech in the photography book: "In my eyes, the guards are amphibious journalists who are good at photography and writing. As a current political reporter, I am busy covering big news all day. As a social journalist, I always focus on civilian life. As a war correspondent, he was on the front lines of the war. As a foreign correspondent, I explore various fields abroad. No matter what the interview, as long as you send him out, you will always do your best to succeed. After countless times of experience, he has both practical experience and theoretical thinking. ”
In 1997, in Hiroshima, Japan, an old man praying in front of the memorial monument after the atomic bombing.
In 2000, Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan participated in the Chinese Dragon Dance on the Great Wall in Beijing. Years later Jackie Chan collected this picture. The vivid and typical character images recorded in the typical environment have more historical and artistic value.
Times are changing, photography is changing, and my own perceptions and thoughts about photography are also changing. Start taking pictures and flowers and flowers with your camera; Later, social news, emergencies, and current political news were filmed, mostly to complete the interview task; Later, consciously record more news scenes and preserve materials for history; Nowadays, photography is gradually seen from the perspective of new media, integrated media, diversity and big vision. Observing, focusing, shooting, thinking, photography has become a way of life and is deeply integrated into my life.
In the spring of 2000, at Christie's Hong Kong, the Bronze Bull Head and the Bronze Monkey Head in the Old Summer Palace were about to be auctioned. This news photo has received widespread attention from the society.
In the spring of 2004, in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, young people held a rite of passage celebration party at a hotel.
Photography is a medium closely related to real life and the pursuit of personality, and different people have different ideals and pursuits. Photography is a job and a profession for me, but also a hobby and a pleasure. Over the years, I have always hoped to do something practical and meaningful for society and the people with the camera in my hand.
Wen Jiabao, then premier of the State Council, gave me a book inscription many years ago: "Record reality with photography and serve the society with sincerity." He Ping, a former director of xinhua news agency, once said in the preface to my documentary literary book "Our 30 Years - China's Reform and Opening Up in the Eyes of a Journalist": "The mission of journalists is not only to record history, but also to promote social change and progress." "The encouragement and hope of leaders and seniors has always been the direction of my efforts.
In 2008, the capital of Madagascar, Antananarivo. Children running in the rain.
In the autumn of 2009, Nobel laureates in physics Yang Zhenning (second from left) and his wife Weng Fan attended a National Day reception for foreign experts at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
How big the outside world is, how big photography is. No matter how big photography is, it is difficult to record the dynamic and vivid world with two-dimensional still photos. Sometimes you can feel the power and influence of photography, and sometimes you can feel its limitations and helplessness. To this end, I have been exploring and using the photography method of photography + text + thinking, and strive to make photography play a greater role in the integration with other media. Using this method of attaching equal importance to graphics and text, telling the story behind photography, publishing hundreds of self-media graphic works, and writing a number of documentary works, it has produced a positive and good social impact.
Nowadays, photography and pictures have been widely integrated into the lives of modern people, as a difficult or lack of interaction and communication in the Internet age, photography can make people become knowledgeable, rich and diverse, healthy and happy. I often tell my friends, do you want to be happy? Take a picture.
In 2011, in front of the White House in Washington, D.C., I snapped several photos of police officers and was chased by the police for a long time.
In 2015, in Bogotá, colombia's capital, a gust of wind blew through, and people and nature transformed into strange scenes.
Human growth is inseparable from the surrounding environment and soil. After working in Xinhua News Agency for more than 30 years, I am especially grateful for the support of leaders and colleagues at all levels of Xinhua News Agency, and with their help, I will gradually make progress. Thanks to the famous photographer Wang Wenlan for writing the preface to "Photography Practice Notes", his earnest and profound preface is a sincere encouragement to me. I would like to thank the photographers Xu Zugen, Xie Hailong, Li Ge, Sheng Xigui, and the writers Liang Heng and Liang Xiaosheng for their speeches, and their warm praise is an encouragement to me. In the process of writing and revising the manuscript, friends from all walks of life gave sincere support and help, which made me strengthen my confidence and motivation.
At the Forbidden City in Beijing in 2017, then-President Trump and his wife.
The two years from writing to publishing photography books are catching up with the spread of the new crown epidemic at home and abroad, the complex and changeable epidemic has changed people's working and living conditions, and the closure and isolation have also won valuable time for completing the book manuscript. While paying attention to the development of the situation, we firmly believe that the epidemic will eventually pass. Life will be brilliant with sunshine, and the world will always be better.
Wang Wenlan, an adviser to the China Photographers Association, wrote in the preface to "Practical Photography": "We are in a once-in-a-lifetime great era, facing the threshold of heralding change at any time, and readers will find the spiritual fulcrum of the historical process in the book. These countless fragments of memory have been crushed by the wheel of history and will surely become a mirror of the mind full of wisdom.
In 2019, beijing celebrated the 70th anniversary of the National Day. The plane under review flew over Tiananmen Square.
"Mirror of the Mind full of wisdom" should be a pursuit. Nowadays, no matter where you go, even if you commute to work every day, if you don't take a few photos of interest, you always feel that there are some shortcomings today. The habit I have developed over the years, while walking, watching, shooting, thinking, the fireworks and different scenery on the road of life are really beautiful.
Liu Weibing
He is a senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency, a member of the China Photographers Association, a member of the China Press Photo Society, and a member of the China Writers Association.
Photography and text / Liu Weibing
The original article was published in the July 2022 issue of Photography World, P16-31
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