As a master of documentary photography, Liu Xiangcheng used images to report on important events around the world in the last 25 years of the last century, recording the historical moments of the times, his life journey and mind are as wonderful as the stories in his lenses, and he still insists on the value and significance of exporting images to the outside world after he is old
Interview | Yang Lang
Edit | Zhang Bixue
Caijing magazine and "Giant Wave Sight" launched a series of video special video programs - lithography. Literary critic Yang Lang has been talking to dozens of Chinese photographers. Through interviews, we review the creations and experiences of photographers and recreate the highlights of their lenses.
The guest of this issue is Liu Xiangcheng, a famous documentary photography master and founder of Shanghai Photography Art Center.
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Yang Lang: Over the past year or so, I have always wanted to make a holistic review of China's documentary photography over the past 40 years, this period of history may have passed, and the overall environment of the times has changed dramatically, but I want to leave some memories of what this generation of documentary photographers did. I'm not a person in the photography world, I can say an observer of photographic culture, so that I can be a little detached and jump out on certain things to see the phenomenon.
You have made a great contribution to Chinese documentary photography, everyone respects you, admires the values presented in your works, and is very cordial to contact, but everyone will always feel that you are a foreigner. So I hope that you can judge the history and characters of Chinese documentary photography over the years with a certain sense of distance, and share your observations and judgments, which I especially want to hear.
Cross boundaries
Liu Xiangcheng: I was born in Hong Kong, I returned to the mainland to receive an education at a very young age, and I have always told people that this period of time has had a profound impact on me and is very helpful for me to observe China. A lot of things are a little bit different from the outside, and I think the soil in China today is very rich, and we can take this opportunity to develop this idea, because once you define yourself as a Chinese or a foreigner, you set up a quarantine yourself. If everything in China has to go out, how should photographers look at this matter? I think it's worth exploring further, where we're going to put ourselves. If an athlete, such as a skier, can cross this boundary, then the photographer, as I understand it, should cross this boundary. Now China, from top to bottom, often expresses this emotion in one sentence - you have me, I have you.
Yang Lang: I think it's very interesting, you are very sensitive, this topic is currently the most worth discussing is Gu Ailing.
Liu Xiangcheng: In addition to Gu Ailing, there are also Zao Wou-Ki and I.M. Pei, and what they do is also a language, the language of painting, the language of architecture. What we photographers do is to use pictures to tell stories, and as for the stories we say that people can't read and understand, I think this is a topic that has always plagued Chinese photographers. Therefore, if we do not absorb, digest and develop this big framework just now, we will limit ourselves.
Yang Lang: As soon as you came up, you asked a very key question, which is cultural identity. In our generation, the concepts of China and foreign countries are innate, and the vision of your images is different, which is difficult for Chinese photographers and photographers of that era to reach. You have crossed cultures, crossed education, and spanned the entire era of reform and opening up, and you have done a lot of integration and communication in the middle.
Liu Xiangcheng: From my birth in 1951 to today, my time in China has exceeded more than half of my life, so I think that it is another thing to identify with or disagree, objectively speaking, most of my life has done a lot of things in this land.
Yang Lang: Not only are you observing from the outside, you used to live here.
Liu Xiangcheng: If I hadn't been in China for that long, the president of the Associated Press wouldn't have given me five social networks in Beijing, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Seoul, and Moscow. The Associated Press, as one of the most mainstream American news organizations, will not allow reporters to bring back things that they cannot understand. I think that for photographers, we rely on our work, not on slogans.
So when you talk about me being a foreigner, you can't ignore how I overcame the difficulties in the United States and fulfilled the strict requirements of the agency.
Yang Lang: This is something that we generally find difficult to feel.
Absorb civilization
Liu Xiangcheng: When I shoot the United States, they can accept it, I shoot China, and I believe that Chinese also accept it, which is very important. Although we say that photography is a world language with no written barriers, it is objectively problematic. Let me give you an example, Chinese liked Mark Lübbe and I liked Bresson, and there were German photographers and American photographers at that time, why couldn't they compare with Mark Lübü and Bresson? Because the two of them have a culturally admiring vision of China, this thing can be expressed on the picture. Chinese agree with that description, and I don't think Chinese would feel the same way about what American photographers do.
Pictures can express a sense of affinity, the person you take, what kind of eyes he uses to see you, the audience can feel, this is the Chinese photographer rarely talk about the empathy of photography. This thing cannot be subjectively said, you have to be like a sponge, to absorb the other side's civilization.
Yang Lang: For the understanding of empathy, Chinese photographers have been slow to progress, and it is relatively easy for them to ignore the culture behind empathy.
Liu Xiangcheng: This has a big cultural background, because photography was invented by Westerners, and in the 200 years that they have used photography as a tool, they have had a lot of profound experiences. This person in front of me is Deng Xiaoping, or Nixon, how do I talk to them, how do I develop a basic sense of trust with the other party in a short period of time. There is no such thing, although he lets you shoot, but his eyes will tell the person watching the picture that this is a strange relationship.
Liu Xiangcheng and then-US President Richard Nixon.
In 1981, Kissinger visited China. Photography / Liu Xiangcheng
Yang Lang: This is an interesting part of your vision and your artistic outlook as an artist, and recently I found that there are many photographers in China who are actually extending on the basis of journalistic status, and you are a senior on these issues, and I would like to hear your observations.
Accept the challenge
Liu Xiangcheng: When I returned to China in the 1970s as a reporter for Time Magazine, I had already started contributing to the Associated Press, so I met The Associated Press's president, Mr. John Roderick, who interviewed Chairman Mao and Zhou Enlai while in Yan'an. In 1971, when ping-pong diplomacy was in place, he came back, and in the Great Hall of the People, Zhou Enlai saw him from afar, walked over to him, shook hands with him, and said thank you for opening the door of China for the second time.
When I started contributing to them, he noticed me, and in 1981, when the Foreign Ministry allowed China to have a third foreign correspondent, he said that this position must be given to Liu Xiangcheng, that we need this person to report in China, and that the Associated Press needs someone to explain the China in the picture. They gave me such an important position, which shows that they are already able to accept my eyes, my lenses, my editors, and there is no doubt about this.
In 1981, three young people from Jinghong in Xishuangbanna. Photography / Liu Xiangcheng
Yang Lang: For us, Liu Xiangcheng is actually a symbol of a world press officer.
Liu Xiangcheng: I am interested in international news, and when I want to really complete my interest, the Associated Press has given me a lot of space and opportunities. I was in Los Angeles enjoying the Southern California sun, living in a house by the beach, and not too stressful about work, so when I said I was going to India, Americans were crazy and wondered why I was going to this ghost place in India.
Do you know what my mood was at the time? I didn't tell them that if my job, my ideals, I had to leave such a wonderful Southern California, I was going to go to a place that you all found difficult and take on new challenges. They already agree with my work in China, but they will think that it is because I have an innate language advantage, and it is appropriate to do well, but they all know that India is difficult. If I hadn't broken through myself to take charge of the seven South Asian country bureaus, the president of the Associated Press wouldn't have thought of me when the Soviet Union was about to collapse and would have given me the Moscow branch.
Yang Lang: They are looking for someone who is competent for this job and give him a more weighty thing to do, so you go from China to India, and then from India to Moscow.
In 1986, Muslim Muslims in New Delhi, India, prayed. Photography / Liu Xiangcheng
In 1988, after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, the Taliban Civil War began. Photography / Liu Xiangcheng
Liu Xiangcheng: At that time, the director of the Associated Press in Moscow, as soon as he heard about me, he went to ask me the branch where I worked, "What do you think of Liu Xiangcheng as a person?" All the presidents told him, "Moscow is an easy place to work as far as we know, and if I were you, I would take Liu Xiangcheng to your side." "This is the result of internal recognition, coordination, and investigation.
In 1992, I won the Pulitzer Prize for filming the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I received the call, I was calm, but I said that fortunately I did not embarrass the yellow race, there were more than 400 Soviet photojournalists under this branch, and I returned such a heavy award, and the Pulitzer Prize was also fiercely competitive that year. The first thing that came to my mind was that I didn't embarrass the Chinese or disappoint the Associated Press. What I want to say is that if you can have performance in different cultures and different news environments, you need to have the ability to interpret different environments, different societies, and different cultures.
On December 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev threw down his speech after delivering his resignation speech. Soon after, the Soviet Union collapsed. This photograph of the Kremlin night is considered a model of photojournalism, and the famous photographer Liu Xiangcheng won the Pulitzer Prize for Live Press Photo in 1992, the highest honor in journalism, and he was also the first Chinese photographer to receive this award. Photography / Liu Xiangcheng
Yang Lang: You have a very strong enterprising spirit, others say why do you still go to that place in India, in fact, you have Chinese the arrogance of "Yan Que An Zhi Hong Hu Zhi
Liu Xiangcheng: At that time, I wanted to see the world, and I had this feeling. Since my father was also a newspaperman, I would love to see what I can do myself. I am constantly challenging myself, whether the Chinese can find a reporter in the world, not with their mouths, but with practical actions to speak for you. Many people say that Liu Xiangcheng was lucky in the last 25 years of the 20th century, but can this kind of thing rely on luck?
Yang Lang: They all say that you are lucky, but your luck is the result of 20 years of laying the groundwork, and you speak with the film.
Liu Xiangcheng: Right. It's about speaking through a lot of competition, to have a good performance, because the Associated Press, Reuters, AFP, the people from these news agencies are not people who don't work. We all know how your pictures are adopted, if you send you to those places, and you come back every day to lose the battle, do you think people will give you this position? I don't think this is explained by luck.
Yang Lang: Your photography experience, your understanding of the empathy of images, and your state of perseverance have led to your position in photography. Let me change my perspective, in your field of vision, who do you think are the Chinese photographers you like?
Hand in hand with colleagues
Liu Xiangcheng: I think He Yanguang is outstanding, because I have known him for many years, I see his own curiosity, and he is constantly looking for new languages, I see it. From the pictures he took that year to the book he had just published recently, you can see that what he pays attention to has been changing, and this is the most obvious I have seen in this type of photographer. He has a pursuit of humanistic values, he has his interest in the language of photography, and together the two, he is able to pursue different sensitivities in the picture.
There is a saying that "you and I cannot choose each other's mother and father", and we are born with an objective ecological environment. Everyone's ecology and the friends he interacts with are different, how to put different influences in all aspects on their own, and then explain it, digest it, show it, this is growth. So that's why human experience is precious.
Yang Lang: You have known Yan guang for decades, and your attention to him has continued to this day. Who else, you have a relatively high rating?
Liu Xiangcheng: A person engages in the same thing all his life, he needs a kind of accumulation, you look at a person's work, objectively speaking, the things of the younger generation cannot be seen in the newspaper, because today there are various standards for pictures in newspapers, what is published, what cannot be published, what kind of pictures are published, in this case it is not easy for me to find everyone. But in those days, because I had lived in Beijing for such a long time, we had a lot of contact, and I saw what they took. I paid attention to the fact that when Yanguang was no longer a newspaper reporter, his interest in the things around him, his interest in photography, I saw that many of his things began to show up, and there was a great contrast with the front, slowly evolving, the lenses he used, the people he paid attention to, the compositions he paid attention to, and so on. The other young people, at the moment I don't know much, you asked me to suddenly take a magnifying glass and look at it, I can't see it because I don't have the opportunity.
Yang Lang: That's true.
For the national statue
Liu Xiangcheng: I have previously compiled three books, "Portrait of China, a Country", "Shanghai: Portrait of a Great City from 1842 to 2010", and "One Nine one: A Century-old Video History from the Opium War to the Warlord Melee", and traveled all over the world to look at all the pictures related to China, because since you want to compile a book, you must collect, sort out and edit the information well.
Shanghai: 1842-2010, Portrait of a Great City (Australia), Penguin Press
One Nine One One: A Century-Old Video History from the Opium War to the Warlord Scuffle (China) World Book Publishing Company
Yang Lang: Is this what you want to do yourself, or is it something that some organization has asked you to do.
Liu Xiangcheng: It's what I want to do myself, I think Chinese say that the shame of a hundred years is something, the official expression has its correctness, but I think it can be reflected from the image how China has come this hundred years, to have details, we can't use four words to express the whole experience for the next generation, the next generation, this thing has a picture. If you talk about the shame of a hundred years, I have a book, there is a basis, at that time Chinese how this road came about, this is when I was a reporter in the head asked myself, that book I worked on for more than four years.
Yang Lang: The images in several of your works are all photos transferred from all over the world, and of course, there are many classic films by Chinese photographers.
Liu Xiangcheng: The book "Portrait of China, a Country" is mainly Chinese photographers, I looked at hundreds of photographers' things, and finally collected the works of 89 photographers. By that time in 2008, the picture began to change, but the change was not particularly large, and the things recorded in the past 60 years have been very rich. This is a tool that fell from the sky, to look back at our lives, to look back at the road we have traveled, what do we do without doing this thing?
Yang Lang: In fact, you must also have qualifications to do this, your vision, your experience, why Liu Xiangcheng said to make a picture book, everyone is willing to follow you.
Liu Xiangcheng: This thing is very interesting, my things are like this. China's bid for the Olympics is the second time to succeed, the first time lost to Sydney, in fact, the second bid for the Olympic public relations is recommended by me and a friend, a very experienced team, before the Athens Olympic bid is also their engaged.
Yang Lang: At this time, Beijing also knew that it was going to use the modern way.
Liu Xiangcheng: It is a statement, many places have to defend, and we must use international languages to introduce Beijing to others. So that night I was very concerned about what the result would be, so I went with my wife Karen to the upper floor of the VIP building to see the results, and the results came out "Beijing". Within 20 minutes, I began to hear the sound of gongs and drums, and a large group of people poured into Tiananmen Square and went there to celebrate the successful olympic bid. We stood on the side and saw people pouring in, that scene I was actually very familiar with, I watched the scene of the flow of people pouring into Tiananmen Square many times, so I just stood there and thought calmly, I said that in five years, Beijing will host the Olympic Games, and it will welcome so many international friends, tourists, athletes, delegations. I asked myself, and I said that the world knew about the road that New China had taken, and my answer was that they didn't know, so I contacted Zhao Qizheng, then director of the Foreign Propaganda Department, and I said that I wanted to compile a book to introduce the road that New China had taken.
We cooperated more with the Information Office of the State Council, and he was also very supportive, so I began to do it, just to do it myself, and I did not ask anyone to give me any funds, nothing more than to introduce Liu Xiangcheng to write a letter to edit this book, that is, so much. When I was done, I went to the publisher of the best photography album in the world, and I said look at these things, and if you're interested, we can collaborate. He read it, in one word— I would publish the book, six Chinese English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian. Introducing to the international community Chinese has traveled this road, and no one has finished this book without acknowledging China's progress. People have eyes. So I know that what I'm going to express, I'm going to be on the right side of history, and that's important.
Yang Lang: Standing on the right side of history.
Liu Xiangcheng: Yes, I think I have this judgment ability, I am not boasting, because if you are vague about this thing, you must not do this kind of thing. I believe that the books I have compiled may not necessarily have the consent of all the people, but everyone can accept them.
Yang Lang: I have learned a lot about you.
Liu Xiangcheng: You think I've been running around with a camera.
Look to the future
Yang Lang: History is really happening in front of your eyes, and after it happened, you had a feeling of "I want to do one thing, use my profession to record the changes in these decades", so you compiled and published a lot of albums. If in your opinion, is there a style genre in Chinese documentary photography? For example, those who are partial to journalism, partial to subjective ideology, or biased towards a certain humanities.
Liu Xiangcheng: I think photography is a very mysterious art, and its scope is very wide. Over the years, many domestic friends have asked me what is humanistic photography, what is documentary photography, what is photojournalism, what is concept photography, what is art photography. Everyone wants you to find a very straight path for him, and he can pursue this matter. I say this doesn't work, this idea is too rigid, because you say this is photojournalism, and you will find a very narrow dead end as you walk along this road. But if you open up the art of video, and you wander around in different photographs yourself, you will eventually find your own language.
So I said to be a Shanghai Photography Art Center, presented to everyone with different photography exhibitions, because you asked me to say it alone, this is too tired. News photography, humanistic photography, art photography, it has its own language, let the audience in the process of watching to feel, to find the same portrait, there are so many ways to shoot, there is no need to cut this thing so fine.
What I really want to communicate with you is the possibility of photography, how to develop on the soil of China, do not put yourself in a very small box, only in this way, the possibility of your photography can be developed. Sometimes I tell young people that if you ask me what I'm going to shoot, your vision is too narrow.