The more simple things are, the more they can often strike directly into the depths of people's souls, and thus the more they can move people. This set of shots under Guo Zibin's camera abandons the hustle and bustle of the city and leads our eyes to the pure, simple and quiet countryside: the sunset that is about to fall, the silhouette of the old man with the dragon bell, the lonely tree on the side of the road, the silent flowing river... All the objects seem to evoke our distant memories of entering middle age, the warm but lonely memories of life.
Professor Zheng Yaling of Beijing Film Academy personally wrote a film review for this group of photographic works with the title of "The River of Memories of Everyone in Life" _____
__ Editor's Note
A river of memories in life
—— Commenting on the photography group photo: The distant and silent river
With the revolution of the times and science and technology, the art of photography is naturally undergoing profound changes. What is particularly prominent is the evolution of photography from the "chemical age" to the "digital age", and the scientific concept and technological revolution have impacted the self-attributes of photography as a recording function and a document function, replaced by a more abstract conceptual and private image expression. On this point, it is true that the conceptual evolution of photography is indeed too slow compared to other art disciplines. However, whether it is functional or conceptual; whether it is traditional or modern, it is inseparable from its origins, and art always pursues and expresses only two words - "memory", or personal memory, or memory of the times; or the memory of reality, or the memory of the heart.
In the process of china's urbanization and modernization today, most of the photographic works are synchronized with the development of the times, reflecting the memory expression of the rise of the new urban culture, including subjectivization, decoration, and advertising, that is, the marketization of consumerist ideology. Under the tide of this mainstream value that is gradually forming, by chance, a group of photographic works by Guo Zibin, "That Distant And Silent River", is presented in front of everyone, and the scenery and characters in the panoramic composition show their own charm in a rustic style, which is in strong contrast with many photographic works nowadays, and its unique sense of distance is indifferent.
Guo Zibin was born in a small village in southwest Lu and grew up with his grandmother since childhood. After he grew up with a passion for art and moved from the countryside to the city, he worked as a guard, an artist, a journalist, a television cameraman, an artist for many film and television dramas, a photographer, and the chief photographer of various newspapers and magazines. After 1986, his photographic works won consecutive awards in various film festivals, and later became a member of the China Photographers Association. After 1995, he was admitted to the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy to study again, and from March 21 to April 8, 1997, he successfully held the first exhibition of students' personal photography works in the history of the School in the first exhibition hall of Beijing Film Academy, and won the certificate of "The First Person in the Student Film Festival of Beijing Film Academy". In the photography exhibition of the 7th Art Festival of the Film Academy, his work "Childhood" won the second prize in the professional group of the academy.
Now, after nearly 20 years of hard work and accumulation, Guo Zibin has owned a personal video studio with the first scale. His dream has not changed, although things have changed for stars, people are no longer confused, but Zibin still often dreams of his hometown, unforgettable, he said: "Every time I go home, I will see those corn stubbles that have been stripped of their pellets and cut off their head ears trembling in the wind in the autumn land... The sun sprinkles on their chaotic and wind-swaying leaves, and the golden dots of light seem to be the last soothing in the background of the bloody dusk..." It is his homesickness and nostalgia, the memory of growth, that makes him take many excellent pictures and videos again and again again against the background of the Chinese rural countryside where he has lived.
Life, the mother of art, gave Zi Bin passion and thought, the concept of change and the confidence of creation. In his set of photographic works "That Distant And Silent River", Zi Bin arranges a group of pictures in turn with a sheet of grandma, grandma and grandpa, grandma, grandpa and uncle, in which the characters look at the slowly disappearing distant river, the sunset dusk and the river flowing in silence, and the subtle changes in the light and shadow of the picture in the backlight gradually form, suggesting the inner flow of time and the spirituality of the picture. Heaven and earth, man and heaven, man and nature are one with the inner order and law of life.... In this group of photographic picture works, the most aesthetic impact is the simple shape of the characters, similar to the silhouette of the character posture and back contour, or standing, or squatting, which exudes the complementarity of man and nature, the simple local mood and the rural atmosphere are amazing, and the simple charm of the ancient rhyme even makes people ignore the existence of photography skills.
From the study of the history of world cinema and the history of photography, I have observed that many forms of contemporary Chinese photography art are the internal medium for the creator to express the objective world and self-expression he feels, but at the same time it is the external composition of the life body of the work. When the artist starts from the content of spiritual awareness and finds the most appropriate combination and expression of forms, then the spiritual meaning and creative connotation of the artistic creator have been deeply infiltrated in this formal expression.
The artist's heart and emotions must be expressed in the form he wants to express, and this form must be the rhythm of harmony between the mind and the essence. Otherwise it's a pile of garbage...
The development of various types of art in human society. It is a field of various forces. It is also a whirlpool of torrents wrapped in various social contradictions, containing superficial calm, waves and deep undercurrents, like the distant and silent river that runs endlessly and endlessly...
Zibin firmly believes that "the more simple things are, the closer they are to the essence of beauty." However, in his group of photographs of "That Distant And Silent River", the simplicity expressed is not a pursuit, but a memory and quality from his heart. This set of pictures of his can be extended to let people experience a poem, an ancient song and a long and heavy story and legend, there is no Mannerism, there is no "transience"; it cannot be looked at and cannot be copied, just as each of us lives in the current great social and historical background, because this is also a personal patent belonging to Guo Zibin, a river of memory in life. The river that is far away and silent, but never calm, the river of memory that each of us must cross in our lives...
—— Zheng Yaling
Professor of Beijing Film Academy: Zheng Yaling
Zheng Yaling, born in 1955, is a native of Beijing. Graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University, he is a professor at the Beijing Film Academy and a member of the China Filmmakers Association.
Courses: History of Foreign Cinema, Japanese Film Studies, Film Master Studies, Film Analysis, And World Film History.
Main achievements and awards: In 1993, he won the "Outstanding Young Teacher Award" issued by the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Higher Education and the "Excellent Teacher Award" issued by the Beijing Municipal Government; in 1994, the film "Burning Snowflakes" (screenplay) won the "Huabiao Award - Excellent Film Award" of the National Government; in 1997, the textbook "History of Foreign Films" won the second prize of the first "Scientific Research Achievements" of the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television of China; in 1999, the TV feature film "Yufadu" - Oshima Nagisa New Film Documentary (planner and writer) In 2001, the four-episode TV special "Into the World of Akira Kurosawa" (planner and writer); in 2003, he was awarded the title of "Top Ten Outstanding Teachers" by the Beijing Film Academy; in 2006, he published the book "Encyclopedia of Literary and Art Knowledge" (editor-in-chief).