Photographer Li Yan: I am a closest audience member to the play

Hangzhou, August 10 (China News Network) -- A few days ago, the "Drama and Shadow - Li Yan Photography Exhibition for the 110th Anniversary of Chinese Drama" is being held in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Photographer Li Yan came to the scene of the event to discuss the drama and life under the lens with the fans, and shared the story between him and the drama over the years.

Pictured: Photographer Li Yan. Photo by Cheng Yin

For those who love theater, the name "Li Yan" is not unfamiliar, Meng Jinghui, Lai Shengchuan, Chen Jianbin, Guo Tao, Yuan Quan and other dramatists who are now or have been active on the stage have appeared in his lens.

Li Yan, who graduated from high school in 1982, became a librarian under the introduction of an old comrade-in-arms of his father. The following year, because of his interest in literature and drama, Li Yan hoped to enter the study of Chinese opera through the art examination, but because the results of the cultural class did not meet the standard, he finally failed to do so. However, in the process, he firmly believed in an idea: in this life, he will do drama.

In 1989, Li Yan came to the College of Adult Education of Chinese University to study photojournalism. During the three years of study, Li Yan took many photographic works, some of which were also published in the media.

In 1993, due to a chance encounter, Li Yan met Mou Sen and Meng Jinghui through friends and began to take pictures of them. Because of the foundation of early drama learning, Li Yan is better than other reporters when shooting drama scenes, both in terms of angle and composition. Slowly, Li Yan began to make a small name in the theater circle, and more and more people began to contact him for filming. In 1998, a magazine began to open a column for Li Yan...

2006 also has a special significance for Li Yan, when the mainland version of the Taiwan Performance Workshop's drama "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" premiered. Li Yan was invited by yuan hongzhi, the producer at the time, to take work photos in the crew, and for a whole month, he soaked in the crew as soon as he had time. One day, Lai Shengchuan asked him, we have a role you would like to play, Li Yan agreed without hesitation.

It was also this opportunity that he walked from behind the scenes to the front of the stage and participated in "Crush on Peach Blossom Garden" as an actor, acting for ten years and more than four hundred times. In the mainland version, he, like Huang Lei, He Jiong, and Jiao Yang, is one of the actors who have participated since the premiere of the play, although he only has six lines in the play...

In 2016, Li Yan published the book "When Drama Has Become a Thing of the Past", which records the story of the drama circle he personally experienced from 1982 to 2006, with more than 300,000 words and nearly 500 pictures.

Li Yan said that although he did not become a theatrical actor, he was integrating into the drama in another way. He has been an audience member of Chinese dramas for 30 years, using his camera to record the changes of Chinese drama and the growth of several generations of artists, and is the closest "audience" to drama.

Li Yan once said: "A person has a person's life, and my life may be to be a bystander and a recorder." Now that you are on the road, you have to go on, which is called 'attachment'. So, in these thirty years, he has always focused on this, and gradually recorded an era in the dense flow of time.

It is reported that the "Drama and Shadow - Li Yan Photography Exhibition for the 110th Anniversary of Chinese Drama" will last until August 27. (End)