'A Photo I Love' by Hazel Johnson

Thomas Joshua Cooper- 'Late Winter Light - The Source of the River North Esk Rushing from Loch Lee' Glen Esk, Old Angus, Scotland  (1997-2004)

The image I have selected, ‘Late Winter Light,’ is a fine example of Thomas Joshua Cooper’s energetic yet simple views outwards. The image engages with nothingness and makes it into something the human eye does not perceive. This method of image creation takes the camera away from a tool to record, and turns it into a devise to expand our vision. Cooper does not see simply the tangible items in our environment, but rather uses his photography to create an atmosphere. The falling waves and lack of sharpness show the traces of continual movement, emphasizing that no moment is an exact replica of the next, whilst equally becoming a beautiful and calming moment in its own right.

Exhibition Review: Uncommon Ground

Uncommon Ground: Land Art in Britain 1966-1979 (UK Touring Exhibition)

The Mead Gallery, Warwick Art Centre, University of Warwick, Coventry

18th January – 8th March 2014

FREE ENTRY

Artists: Roger Ackling, Keith Arnatt, Boyle Family, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Tony Cragg, Jan Dibbets, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Barry Flanagan, Hamish Fulton, Andy Goldsworthy, Antony Gormley, Susan Hiller, John Hilliard, Derek Jarman, David Lamelas, John Latham, Richard Long, Roelof Louw, Anthony McCall, Bruce McLean, Garry Fabian Miller, David Nash, Roger Palmer, David Tremlett

Curated by:

Nicolas Alfrey (University of Nottingham)

Joy Sleeman (UCL Slade School of Fine Art)

Ben Tuffnell (writer and curator)

Review by: Hazel Johnson

The land that surrounds us has been the inspiration to many great artists throughout history. Uncommon Ground celebrates the diversity of Land Art created between the mid 60’s and the late 70’s. A carefully selected combination of 24 of the most significant artists working within this period will be on show at the Mead Gallery until mid-March.

The exhibition questions what it is to be a spectator experiencing these pieces. Unlike most art works, land art is reliant upon an experiential method of viewing, a direct involvement with the artist.

Many of the works on show existed in their original format for only their moment of creation, and this is one of the brilliances of Land Art. Therefore, how is it that today, in some cases 40 years later, the viewer can still share that experience with the artist, long after the moment has passed. The indexical record, created through photographic capture, has challenged the site-specific temporality of many of these pieces. By recreating the pieces through a photograph the context is preserved, yet altered.

Jacob Bronowski in The Ascent of Man (1973) states that man “is not a figure on the landscape – he is a shaper of the landscape.” Andy Goldsworthy in a prime example of this ‘man’. Four photographs, presented in grid format, show the visual exploration Goldsworthy has with the landscape. He challenges and pushed the elements into sculptures that echo natural habitats, yet stand out like a sore thumb. The use of photography is vital to Goldsworthy. It is used not simply to record, but to re-invent his pieces. ‘Forked Twigs in Water- Bentham’ (1979) and ‘Balanced Rocks’ (1978) are displayed along side each other, the balance between positive and negative space is mirrored in each image, showing the importance of Goldsworthy’s images beyond simply the sculptures presence in the landscape. Goldsworthy uses the landscape to paint a vision. His sculptures themselves are temporary; through the capture they become permanent, and only then is the process complete.

Andy Goldsworthy, Balanced Rocks, 1978

Andy Goldsworthy, Forked Twigs in Water- Bentham, 1979

To recreate the atmosphere and experience the artists underwent in the creation, text becomes important to complete the narrative. Richard Long’s ‘Footstones’ (1979) is a series of simple black and white images of cairns (piles of stones used to guide walkers in poor visibility). Only when the individual title is read in conjunction ‘82 stones placed at 82 feet’ the viewer imagines feeling the exhaustion that would have occurred in the building of these sculptures. The text is equally important to support Long’s image of a field with an indented straight line through the centre. It’s title, ‘A Line Made by Walking’ (1967), explains both the method of creation, and raises thoughts on the power of man to manipulate nature.

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967

Whereas many of the artists worked directly with the physical environment as a tool and canvas, Roger Ackling used the weather as his paintbrush. The natural force of the sunlight and its connection with time was used to create ‘Five Hour Cloud Drawing’ (1980). This image was created with a hand-held magnifying glass used to direct the sun’s rays into an intense beam that burnt the paper. This innovative method of recording shows the variation in the suns intensity with un-burnt areas showing when the clouds blocked out the sun. This piece subtly humours the British obsession with changes in environment and temperature.

Roger Ackling, Five Hour Cloud Drawing, 1980

This obsession with weather also inspired Susan Hiller, whose collections of postcards focus on the extreme conditions caused by the sea. Hiller, who shares Hemera’s love for postcards, collected and categorised British postcards with images of the ‘Rough Sea’ under the title ‘Dedicated to the Unknown Artist’ (1972–76). Displayed with information charts to show the similarities and differences between the presentations of the postcards, Hiller uses these commodities that were once everyday objects and presents them as specimens.

Barry Flanagan, Grass 2, 1967

As much as each piece of work on show holds its own individual value, it was Barry Flanagan’s ‘Grass 1’, ‘Grass 2’ and ‘Grass 3’ that personally stole the show. Flanagan has transformed the banal and everyday subject matter of grass and glorified it through the use of the camera. The photographic outcomes show the simplest material captured in a manner that evokes a sensation of delight, calmness and transience.

This exhibition is a celebration of the committed conceptualist artists on the 1960’s and 70’s shows the importance of out natural environment, and there is no better place to view this than in a gallery disconnected from the cosmopolitan society. The Mead Gallery is the perfect backdrop for the most comprehensive exhibition of British Land Art to date.

Famous Throughout the World: An Introduction to the History of Valentine & Sons Ltd., Dundee and London and the Photographic Postcard

The Hemera curated exhibition Building an Empire: The Photographic Factory of Valentine & Sons took place at Format International Format Photography Festival 2013 from 7 March - 8 April 2013 and represented a changing cultural, social and economic landscape through the photographic images of the picture postcards mass-produced by the Valentine & Sons factories. Moving from the strong-hold of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through two World Wars until the closure of the final Valentine factory, then owned by Hallmark, in 1994; covering over one hundred years of image-making and dissemination throughout the world. The exhibition contained a mixture of original postcards and reproductions of postcards and also revealed how older images taken in the days of the ‘view’ were re-appropriated for the burgeoning postcard industry, sometimes pre-dating the postcard itself. The text below forms an introduction to the exhibition and the history of both Valentine & Sons and the photographic postcard, and is a re-working of the exhibition information text.

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The story of the Valentine & Sons empire begins in Dundee with the birth of James Valentine in 1815. After training as a portrait painter in Edinburgh, James Valentine (1815-1879) returned to Dundee and established a successful engraving business, eventually opening a photographic studio in 1851 to add to his already flourishing enterprise as demand for portrait photographs was booming in the UK. Yet it was James’s son William Dobson Valentine (1844-1907), followed by his son Harben Valentine (1869-1949), who expanded upon these first forays into the commercial photographic industry and created the empire that dominated the photo-postcard landscape at the beginning of the twentieth century and beyond.

It was in the 1860s that William Dobson Valentine, both a chemist and landscape photographer who had trained in the studios of Francis Frith, assisted his father in steering the company through the transitions that would establish it as a dominant producer of ‘views’. Valentine & Sons, alongside another Scottish company, George Washington Wilson of Aberdeen, became known for their topographical scenes in view-card, and sometimes book, form. At this time the expansion of the railways had created the British tourism industry and these cards provided a souvenir, even evidence, of travel that fed the desire for experience and knowledge in the late nineteenth century. Photographic processes were also advancing and William Dobson Valentine oversaw the company’s transition from using the wet collodian process to a dry plate process which enhanced mobility, which was especially important when isolated views were required.

Postcard from the collection of the author, circa 1903

Then in 1870 the postcard was introduced to Britain. Initially blank, the price included postage which was printed directly onto the reverse of the card. Pictures were only added circa 1894 after the introduction of the halfpenny stamp and the legalisation of private postcard production which ended the monopoly of the Post Office, and created a commercial postcard market for the first time. These developments alongside a cultural preference for ‘views’, the maritime trade routes of the British Empire which were its postal routes, and the advancement of photo-mechanical processes for the reproduction of photographic images created the fertile landscape for an explosion of photographic postcard production.

The Valentine’s themselves moved into the postcard business finally in 1897 and the transformation of the Valentine and Sons business from craft workshop to photographic factory had begun. Utilising techniques akin to a mass-production line in the creation of their photographic postcards ensured that a vast array of images could be swiftly produced and distributed and sold for a more affordable price. By 1907 the Valentine’s had their own workforce of commercial photographers, retouchers and printers which mirrors a more general shift to industrialisation in the mass production of imagery in other parts of society such as the mass media. It may be thought that images associated with the pastoral idyll and seaside tourist destinations were the most prevalent and popular but there were also a significant amount of photographic postcards that directly depicted the industrialisation of society. Postcards of workplaces, such as factories, the tools of an industrialised society, trains and other machinery, and the workers themselves were photographed, printed and posted throughout the British Empire and beyond and shows a shift in imagery to appeal to a broader demographic. Through the postcard, the photographic image had become both commercial commodity and personal souvenir whilst fuelling the propaganda of the empire. 

Postcard from the collection of the author, circa 1913

The postcard was at its most popular in the UK from 1902 to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. In 1902 the split back postcard was introduced and allowed for both message and postal address to be written on the reverse of a picture postcard which inevitably boosted sales. At this time Valentine’s offices, or factories, were opening throughout the British Empire and the company expanded into the United States as demand grew. Commercial rivalry between British publishers and those in Germany was intense and were it not for the 1914-1918 war it is possible that the Valentine’s company may never have survived the fierce competition. Military postcards superseded other postcard imagery during World War I as the dominant aesthetic and had their place in the sharing of information between loved ones; boosting morale and promoting the British military at home and abroad. Understandably though postcard use dropped significantly and, while this recovered in the period after the war, it never reached the heights of the early twentieth century and the slow and steady decline of the photographic postcard industry had begun.

Sources and further reading:

M. Boulay, Scotland’s Industrial Photographic Production, Technologies and Distribution: The Legacy of James Valentine and George Washington Wilson, St Andrews University Library, 2010

E.J. Evans & J. Richard, A Social History of Britain in Postcards (London & New York: Longman, 1980)

C. Jackson, University of St Andrews: Valentine Collection, St Andrews University Library, 2010

R.J. Morris, Scotland 1907, The Many Scotlands of Valentine and Sons Photographers (Edinburgh: Berlinn Ltd, 2007)

M. Wollaeger, ‘The Woolfs, Picture Postcards and the Propaganda of Everyday Life’ in M. Wollaeger (ed.) Modernism, Media, and Propoganda: British Narrative from 1900-1945 (Princeton and Oxford: Princetown University Press, 2006) pp.71-127

M. Willoughby, A History of Postcards (London: Studio Editions, 1992)

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Installation view, Building an Empire: The Photographic Factory of Valentine & Sons, Format International Photography Festival, 2013

REVIEW by Fangfei Chen: Illusionary Memory by Chinese Photographer Mo Yi.

Although I have seen many photographs by MO Yi before, I met him for the first time in person at the Dali International Photography Exhibition this year. There he invited my friends and I to visit his new exhibition Illusionary Memory at the Three Shadows Art Centre. 

The exhibition uses images taken from the Cultural Revolution—including photography and poster art—to discuss and explore notions of memory and history. Nearly all of the installations are made of squared industrial tiles. Each of these tiles has been painted with a small Chinese character on a single colour backing. But they can also be divided into three kinds. 

Firstly and most dominantly, tiles are glued together to make a flat surface which hangs from the wall. In the newsletter from the Three Shadows Gallery, GU Zheng emphasises that these works present the passivity of history and discusses the relationship between viewers, artworks and history. It is true that viewers are the one who decide how these works should be experienced. When you walk backwards step by step the scenes become mosaic styled images that are adaptations of identifiable Cultural Revolution scenes, such as the smiling LEI Feng, who is still promoted by the Chinese government as the great model for his willingness to help; and MAO Zedong, who is meeting his Red Guard soldiers on Tian’anmen. When you move closer to one of these works, you can identify that the Chinese characters come together to form sentences which reference slogans and talks made during the Cultural Revolution, or new revolutionary style slogans that have been created by contemporary pop culture. In this way the colours of the tiles are less important than the writing, because people cannot recognise the images anymore in a  closer distance. I enjoyed playing with these works. For GU Zheng, these images stand as both works of art, but also as representations of what we understand of a specific period (in history). Thus, the power and experience of control would stimulate viewers to consider their own roles in understanding history and memory. 

Fig. 1,2,3 Mao Zedong Mets Red Guards on Top of the Tian'anmen

However, something else drew my attention more significantly. Pink, red or yellow fur (or thread) was stuck in between tiles to resemble grass growing up from crevices in the stone floor. They look very soft and mysterious, which make the visual experience vague and ambiguous. This experience is similar to Chinese attitudes to the Cultural Revolution nowadays. People love and hate the event at the same time. But their opinions would not (and do not intend to) stop people benefitting from dealing with the subject. Mao and his red guards have became the popular themes for the now booming Chinese contemporary arts, or are merely served as a cash cows for restaurants. MO Yi—the artist—suggests to us his own understanding, impression and emotion toward the Cultural Revolution in China. This opinion could be applied to other parts of history in a materialised China.  

Fig. 4 A View of Illusionary Memory

Furthermore, some red tiles are glued together to form a ballot box, which is placed at the middle of the gallery space. This colour perfectly matches the images on the wall, as the Chinese government has always been called the ‘Red’ regime and the Cultural Revolution has been understood as a ‘Red’ revolution. In many countries, the ballot box is supposed to stand for democratic power. However, this meaning is questionable in China, especially given a time like the Cultural Revolution where there were continuous power struggles between MAO and other leading officials in the Communist party. Votes from the public are limited. Looking through the slot in the ballot box, audiences can see a video inside which shows a hand writing some phrases backward in Chinese, such as the slogan “to rebel is justified”. The way of writing might be the artist’s criticism to the event. 

Fig. 5 A View of Illusionary Memory

This ballot box is linked to the images on the wall through neat rows of squared tiles on the floor. The contradiction is obviously between democracy (ballot box) and dictatorship (the products of the Cultural Revolution). Each of the tiles on the floor shows a whole image of posters or photographs that were produced during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They present the historical records most held and lead viewers to explore reinterpretations by the artist. Therefore, all the installations in the gallery space are related to each other. The relationships and contradictions between the works, allows viewers to step into an independent time and space, which is neither going back to the historic events nor staying in 2013. The tiles on the floor link and form the whole structure of MO Yi’s historical perception. 

The decision to use visual materials and texts from the Cultural Revolution might sound cheesy for many people but it is crucial to this exhibition. This extreme event should be familiar to Chinese audiences. However, when we look at these artworks and look back into history, we realise how vague they are. 

Fig. 6,7,8 Looking at the Mo Yi's Works from Different Distances

Mo Yi was born and raised in Tibet. His works became well-known since 1990s in Asia. To know more about Mo Yi, please check out this article by the Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/art-and-life-in-china-blur-for-photographer-mo-yi-2017493.html

ESSAY by Ashley Lumb: In Focus: Erwin Blumenfeld

The photographer Erwin Blumenfeld once said: "My life began with the discovery of the magic of chemistry, the interplay of shade and light and the double edged problem of positive and negative." Through a variety of techniques, from solarisation to montage and including the use of mirrors, much of Blumenfeld's work emphasizes artistic duality. 

Blumenfeld began photographing in 1930, when he found a fully equipped darkroom, hidden behind a wall, in his Amsterdam leather goods shop. Through his photography, Blumenfeld began to value truthfulness over commercial considerations and became deeply inspired by the idea of photography as art. Blumenfeld's involvement with the Dada movement in 1921 facilitated the production of a series of extraordinary collages. This lead to the photographer becoming the President of the Amsterdam Dada along with Vice President Paul Citroen, who was the only other member.  He was first widely published in the French magazine PHotographie in 1935, followed by a group exhibition at the Nieuwe Kunst School (New Art School) in Amsterdam with Man Ray, Grosz, Leger, Moholy-Nagy, Mondrian, and Schwitters. In 1938, Blumenfeld met Cecil Beaton who helped secure him a contract at French Vogue. That year he took one of his best know Parisian photos, an image of model Lisa Fonssagrives, Irving Penn's wife, standing on the edge of the Eiffel tower. Blumenfeld's one year contract with French Vogue, however, was not renewed. Finally, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1942 where he continued his photography work with magazines, such as Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Life, Look, and Cosmopolitan. By the mid-1950, Blumenfeld was one of the highest paid photographers in the world.

Inspired by Brassai and the surrealist photographer Man Ray, Blumenfeld maintained an invested interest in the dream world. While he had no formal connections to surrealism, influences from the movement are evident in most of his work. He used complex techniques to endow his subjects with a touch of surrealism and frequently used methods such as wet silk, screens, angles and shadows, which gave his work a combination of abstraction and expressionism. A very competent technician in the darkroom, Blumenfeld also frequently used the technique of solarisation: turning on a light during photographic development to create tone reversals and dark outlines. All of these contrived compositions and effects held an irregular beauty to them but also, at times, overshadowed the subject. 

Photography and surrealism share a fascination with duality and the mirrored reflection. In particular, Blumenfeld's work evidences this shared fascination. The surrealist qualities rendered by his photographs are located within a discourse of a kind of aesthetic dualism. He demonstrates this duality through the use of positive versus negative images, the use of strong light and shadows, as well as solarisation techniques. His nudes employ the use of mirrors; dividing the body into two distorted parts. This oscillation between flesh and mirror, light and dark, makes these nudes extremely powerful. His double portrait images depict a mirrored image of the model, but on closer inspection each side-by-side images remains slightly different, and this contains an affinity harking back to the days of the stereoscope which was invested in the late 1800's. 

Blumenfeld's photos showcase the artist's fluency with the Dadaist vernacular as much as the fashion he helped to promote.  Through is masterful technique Blumenfeld transformed his women and their clothes into elements resembling collage. "Day and night I try," he once noted, "in my studio with its six two-thousand watt suns, balancing between extremes of the impossible, to shake loose the real from the unreal, to give visions body, to penetrate into unknown transparencies." These accompanying fashion images are provocatively beautiful, dramatic, radical and experimental. As evidenced with his long standing history of Dada work, fashion photography however was not an exclusive interest. Nude photographs of Blumenfeld's personal work should be considered of equal importance. As a child, Austrian philosopher Otto Weininger's misogynistic writings on the inferiority of women deeply impacted the photographer. Later, as an adult, Blumenfeld became obsessed with the concept of a uniquely feminine beauty. He once declared "How seriously I take beauty! All my portraits reflect my vision. The artist lives on variations of a single theme." While perhaps a concentration on the ambiguous theme of the aesthetically beautiful can be considered Blumenfeld's "single theme," here his work is considered beneath the unique lens of binary juxtapositions, duality, and forms of stereoscopy.

Blumenfeld's nude beauties were often detached and veiled, not from prudishness but rather in a Freudian playful evocation of the hidden subconscious. While this reflects Blumenfeld's pursuit of nude photography his entire life and a personal indulgence to acclaim "the eternal feminine, the fetishes of my life: eyes, hair, breasts, mouth," it also points to an interest in the interplay between what can be revealed, concealed, insinuated, and perpetuated within a given image. As captivated with the nude as Edward Weston, Blumenfeld's experimental tendencies resulted in subjecting the body to a number of photographic techniques and tricks. One of these was a nude body shot under wet silk which was derived from his childhood discovery that Botticelli and Cranach had depicted their nudes even more naked by covering them with transparent veils. Despite his lengthy career in fashion, Blumenfeld considered his nude studies to be the best and most important part of his work. Fourteen of his sensational nudes were published in the surrealist art journal, Verve, in 1938, a series which can now be viewed in the book The Naked and the Velied: The Photographic Nudes of Erwin Blumenfeld, published in 1999 by Thames and Hudson. 

Erwin Blumenfeld's work remains as fresh and innovative today as it was in the photos taken for the 1940's for Vogue. The development of his personal sleek style divided the photographic space and was marked by an extravagant artificiality. His photographic impact has been far-reaching, with leading photographers such as David Bailey and Nick Knight citing Blumenfeld's influence on their work. Fashion photographer Solve Sundsbo commented recently "Blumenfeld was shooting 60 years ago what the rest of us will be shooting in 10 years time." An artistic interlocutor focused on artificiality and the double, Blumenfeld's work continues to resonate today.

REVIEW by Fangfei Chen: The 5th Dali International Photography Exhibition(DIPE)

Dali is a highly romanticised city which is located in Yunnan Province, China. I say this as the area Dali is situated in is complimented with scenery replete with paddies, mountains, a lake (with fish being caught in some areas by cormorant) and picturesque farmers traditionally plowing their fields; scenes that are endeared and idealised by Chinese urbanites. At one time this scenery and the relaxed atmosphere of Dali brought in backpackers (who would make up the majority of tourists) from outside of China. Nowadays however it attracts millions of national tourist groups and student travelers who travel for the amazing landscapes and welcoming minority and folk cultures. The 5th Dali International Photography Exhibition(DIPE) was held at this city between 1st and 5th Aug 2013. It displayed more than 6,000 photographic works in over 200 exhibitions. 

About the Curators and Photographers

These exhibitions were divided into three sections, which in turn are organised by invited curators, renowned galleries and the photography competition committee separately. The members of the artistic committee included Louise Clements (UK), Claude Hudelot (France), Didier de Fays(France), Gwen Lee(Singapore), RUAN Yizhong(Taiwan) and Robert Pledge (US). Although it may be a surprise (perhaps unfair) that Robert Pledge (one of juries) was awarded the best curator prize, the 2013’ DIPE did have a far more international presence in fresher committees and review boards, making it vastly different from the majority of Chinese photography festivals. 

Part of Pledge’s exhibition is a mini version of his project for the Barbican Centre which belonged to Everything was Moving: Photography from the 60s and 70s. He selected self portraits and photographs of ‘struggle sessions’ (批斗大会) during the Chinese Cultural Revolution by LI Zhensheng. The small portrait sizes of Zhensheng were set up to be compared with enlarged prints of struggle sessions. It does not simply show a photographer’s personal life that is rarely shown, but, under social unrest, the arrangement of these photographs represents how LI created his own utopia. It creates a new insight into this unforgettable historic period for a Chinese audience. As a result, this exhibition is worth its award. However, it cannot stop many people thinking that migrating the exhibition from London to Dali is very opportunistic. 

LI Zhensheng and I stood in front of the poster of Pledge’s exhibition

Other exhibitions that have also migrated to Dali included Multi-Dimensional Chengdu Contemporary Photography Exhibition (2009,2011,2013). However, if you are a visitor—like me—who has seen a previous version of this exhibition, the DIPE provides an opportunity to see how curators use different exhibition spaces, as well as how this space itself can influence the interpretation of the photographs. If you were a new visitor, these exhibitions were definitely worth a trip. 

Specimen, curated by QIN Bo who was nominated the best curator. 

A group exhibition—Asia Female Photographer Exhibition: Voice of Tacitness —was curated by ZHOU Peixia and presented in Dali for the first time. The prize for best photographic work was given to Taslima Akhter who was born in Dhaka and became an activist who pursued the right of workers, especially those of female workers.These photographs brought her great financial support for her work and life, which has encouraged her to carry on pursuing and being active with social movements in her country. They are incredibly affecting images that do much to make us aware of the problems in Bangladesh, of the abuse or just plain unjust absence of workers rights. This is not just localised to Akhter’s subject, but to the global stage where capital takes antecedence. International opinion has become a new political power that can be brought out in photographs like those of Akhter’s. 

Tasmila Akhter, The Life and Struggle of Garment Workers

HUI Huaijie was the winner of the best photographer prize. Each photograph was enlarged to about two by two meters on waterproof cloth. They were hung slightly higher than eye level. Therefore, viewers have to look up to see these aerial photographs. They record manmade constructions on the Chinese landscape, which used to be important (and took a great deal of effort to create) but are nearly forgotten in history, such as in the huge slogan - Long Live Chairman Mao - on deserted mountains. It is not difficult to imagine that these constructions were made during the Great Leap Forward or the Chinese Cultural Revolution during MAO Zedong’s leadership. HUI presents the contradictions and relationships between human beings and the landscape clearly. I understand the meaning and value of these photographs, however, as the waterproof cloth is a difficult material to be printed on, the visual effects limit my enjoyment and the effect of this group of photographs. Regarding technical appropriation, there are far better aerial views at the 2013’ DIPE. 

HUI Huaijie, The Representations of Appearance. 

This is a list of photographers who left an impression. (Maybe some of them did not join in the competition.) 

AO Guoxing, The Ode of Happiness.

QIU Guojun, The Walking Gods. 

ZHANG Zhihui, Serenity of Landscape. 

Anna Kahn, East/West See Dali: Water’s Memory. 

LIN Tianfu, East/West See Dali: Love for Half a Century.

Muge, ASH.

The 2013’ DIPE prizes also included photo books, which award books for the combination of great photographs, the outstanding analysis and interpretations of photographs as well as creative editing and design. Cédric Delsaux’s Dark Lens was awarded the best photo book prize. Personally, I enjoyed the design and photographs of LI Yingjie’s Tai Chi. The long exposures capture the a routines of Tai Chi. The actual situation is playful and full of rhythm, which reminds me of writing Chinese calligraphy. The photographs are shown in black and white. This set of contrasting colours can represent yin and yang, matching the ideology of Tai Chi and Chinese conceptions of nature. The brief articles in the book introduce the ideas and meanings of the projects clearly. Every detail of this photo book shows the input and work of the producer. 

Cédric Delsaux, The Buick, Dubai, 2009. Dark Lens 

Tai Chi by LI Yingjie

About the Organisational Problems

The DIPE was established in 2009. In all honesty it was created to compete with Lijiang, another major tourist location in Yunnan. Dali has resultantly enjoyed a tourist boom for the last five years. Although tourists seem to be more excited about the Torch Festival, which coincides with DIPE on 1st Aug., the DIPE, obviously, is trying to distinguish itself from folk festivals in Yunnan as well as from other photography festivals in China. 

As many other photography festivals in China, the 2009’ DIPE began with different kinds of benefits and financial support from the local government. In other words, the opinions of the local government significantly influences the photography festival’s work. Earlier this year the British Journal of Photography published an article regarding four photography festivals in Asia. It mentioned the governmental oriented characteristic of the Pingyao International Photographic Festival, China. One of the major exhibitions had to be removed there because of governmental request. However, the major partnership for the 2013’ DIPE was a bank, seven real estate developing groups and two distilleries. Two exhibition spaces and one event space were provided by the local real estate developers. Although this may be due to the local government being unwilling to help the DIPE financially, it is more likely a sign that the DIPE is trying its best to be independent from political powers.  

Moreover, the DIPE has paid great attention to sales. From last year, the festival promoted a slogan: If you are looking to buy classic photographs, you should look for them at Dali. Galleries and curators were made ready to take orders from visitors. Every year DIPE publishes its turnover. SHU Nan, a curator and a photographic magazine’s editor, suggested that DIPE has started its transformation from a photography festival to a photographic art fair. 

There are examples of selling photographs from photographers to collectors directly at photography festivals, such as the FOTOBILD, Germany. This brings into question the role of photography festivals, and highlights a potential threat to the structure of photographs’ market (in China, galleries and auction houses are relied on to secure contemporary photographic works). What’s more, because most exhibition spaces in real estate are sold or unsold, the organisor and curators could not change the space much and have very limited exhibition lines. Since no one has lived in those houses for such a long time, the house leaked when raining. This could potentially damage photographs that were exhibited there. Nevertheless, the more financial autonomy the DIPE gets, the more independent the photography festival can become. Of course there are still dangers in seeking private investment which we can hope does not reflect on the content displayed.

DIPE, like many other festivals, adopted a former factory that produced beddings and transformed it into an exhibition space. A brand new wifi installation covered the space, and it will now become a permanent place for art exhibitions and the major venue for the following DIPE. Although this new space still has many issues, such as lighting and electricity, it can be considered as a sign that DIPE wants to escape from the disadvantages of using real estate. From the next DIPE, it will change into a photographic biennale. This decision will give the DIPE more time to solicit partner organizations and exhibition proposals in order to improve the event’s quality. This gives DIPE full potential to becoming the leading photographic festival in China. 

After Thoughts

Coming back to Beijing, I joined a symposium with Beijing photographers and curators. They were talking about the advantages and disadvantages of DIPE and compared it with the Aries, France. Everyone was able to clearly identify the problems with DIPE, but no one was able to suggest ways of solving these problems. In my opinion, everyone believes that the solutions are beyond themselves and inherent. This is the biggest problem for Chinese photography festivals at the moment, in that enthusiastic photographers and curators do not hold organisational power.

P.S. There were about 20 men and 7 women in the meeting room.