On June 19, Xiao Quan, a well-known Chinese portrait photographer, held the "World of Xiao Quan and Dada - Xiao Quan Photography Exhibition" in Suzhou, which is a brand new work that Xiao Quan spent eight years shooting, and it is also the first exhibition of the Eslite Life Suzhou Exhibition Hall after half a year.
This exhibition uses the growth trajectory of two "rainforest spirits" under Xiao Quan's lens, Li Linda and Li Wanda (妲達), telling the most simple and emotional story of man and nature, leading the audience to feel the true situation of nature and life coexisting. In the afternoon, photographer Xiao Quan and li Minguo, an environmental protection worker and dada's mother, and guests and friends jointly visited the Eslite Lecture Hall to share the story behind Dada and talk about the vivid concept of environmental protection.
Photography artist Xiao Quan, born in 1959 in Chengdu, Sichuan, studied under the French master of photography, Marc Lü Bu. Since the mid-1980s, he has photographed the most memorable faces of his life for Sanmao, Yang Liping, Liu Xiaodong, Zhang Yimou, He Duoling, Cui Jian, Dou Wei, Jiang Wen and other cultural elites, and has been praised as "China's best portrait photographer". His photographic collection "Our Generation" and Bresson's album, the "father of modern photojournalism", are displayed side by side at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, becoming a window for the Western world to peek into the real state of China's art and literature in the 1980s and 1990s.
The photographic works exhibited by Eslite this time are brand new works that Xiao Quan spent eight years shooting. In 2013, he made his first trip to the rainforest hinterland of Xishuangbanna, Yunnan Province, to visit the Dada sisters, whose father, Dr. Ma You, a German ecologist, and his mother, Minguo Li, worked together to recreate the rainforest, transforming fifteen acres of gum forest into a symbiotic and co-prospering rainforest ecological sample. In this newborn rainforest, the Dada sisters almost grew up with this rainforest, they not only guarded the rainforest, but also learned from the rainforest life to follow the inner order and live for love.
The exhibition venue records the whole process of Xiao Quan from the first sight of Dada to their adulthood, during which the rainforest occupies almost all of their life scenes. In order to restore the rainforest atmosphere to the greatest extent, the exhibition hall design takes green as the keynote, tropical vegetation as the background, and the long portrait works at both ends connect the circular space of the exhibition hall, bringing immersive visual enjoyment to the audience.
The works on display are based on a time axis, and at the end of the exhibition hall, the two sisters grow up. After becoming an adult, Dada still retains the true face of their own lives: her younger sister Wanda is lively and never denies her ideal of wanting to be an artist; her sister Lin Da is quiet and always firmly wants to heal her life through traditional Chinese medicine. Like other species in the rainforest, Dada inherits the gifts and initiations of nature, is full of aura and authentic and fearless. Ru Xiaoquan's evaluation of them - beautiful but not self-aware.
Dada's growth path is really extraordinary in most people's eyes. And all this in the eyes of her mother Li Minguo, can also be regarded as the cultivation of "diversity" of human beings as one of the countless species. When the couple put into practice the laws of the rainforest reconstruction system that they had devoted their lives to the earth, the rainforest finally became a rainforest again. And Dada is also like this nascent and growing rainforest life, growing brilliantly.
It is reported that the exhibition will last until August 29, and the audience can view the ticket purchase details on the WeChat public account of Eslite Life Suzhou.