How to understand contemporary photography

1. How should photographers position themselves? How do you view your relationship with photography and your relationship with subject matter? How do you view your position in communication? Especially in a noisy consumer society, under the temptation of all kinds of fame and fortune, this is a very critical issue. It determines the length of your photography career and the depth of your photography thoughts. I feel like a lot of photographers these days are too focused on who they are as photographers and unapologetically put that identity before all of the above. The result is that photography itself, the subject matter of photography, and the dissemination of photography are nothing but "gimmicks" created by photographers for personal fame and fortune. This self-centeredness determines that his photography is actually divorced from society and photography. They don’t take the trouble to understand photography, understand society, and understand how photography connects and affects audiences through communication. They adopt "efficiency" methods - to obtain as much benefit as possible at the least possible cost, taking opportunistic measures and disregarding the dignity of thought and photography. To what extent? You will know just by looking at these titles. As soon as the theme of this year's conference was "On the Road", many people chose the title like this: Mass Sports on the Road, On the Road from Shenzhen to Jinan, Migrant Workers on the Road, Investors Investing on the Road... It is far away from photography and reality. Very far. I feel that a truly serious photographer must be someone who hides behind facts and images, is cautious in thinking but quick in action, and does not take "themselves" too seriously.

2. What is photography? Other teachers are saying that the "Xu Xiaobing Cup" should expand the scope of participation, open the door wider, and become international. These opinions are all very good, and these questions all point to the same question: how do we understand contemporary photography.

The organizer of the first "Xu Xiaobing Cup" has set up two categories, one is records and the other is art. But this time we decided to cancel this classification after discussion. This is also a judgment based on the understanding of contemporary photography.

In fact, in contemporary times, documentary, art, and others have all come together. Artist Xu Bing once said: I know that good things are life-threatening. Those things that speak directly to life, no matter how you present them, are all good works of art. The technical, integrated, open and democratic nature of photography determines that it will certainly make great achievements in this direction. Really powerful photography is about paying attention to current issues, current trends, current people's lives, and current people's destiny. Really good photography is usually a personal, personalized expression of a corporate subject. But among so many works participating in the selection, how many have this characteristic? For example, how much do those flowers, grass, old streets, etc. have to do with the present? What does it have to do with individuals and personalities?

3. What should the photo be? A photo should be the result of thought, the result of photographic presentation. From this perspective, I am not optimistic: most people still don’t know how to take photos. The author of the selected set of photos reflecting the pollution of the Bohai Bay is from Shandong. You feel that he is very satisfied with the act of "walking", but he has no idea how to take a penetrating photo in the process. Not thinking enough - a lot of photos have this problem, putting the cart before the horse.

What is a set of photos? It’s about photo editing, it’s about visual communication. We see that picture editing is really frustrating. This is also an old problem, but it must be a key factor hindering the development of photography, because a group photo with chaotic visual logic cannot smoothly convey the information and ideas it carries. If we hold the "Xu Xiaobing Cup" Young Photographers Workshop next time, we might as well consider doing a photo editing workshop specifically. Picture editing is very practical. Many technical details cannot be learned in the classroom and must be solved in actual operations. This is the so-called "learning by doing".

4. We must be highly vigilant against pseudo-vision. Recently, some people have categorically declared that something is outdated, as if Chinese photography, like Western art that has gone through hundreds of years of experimentation and exploration, has broken away from the modernist period and entered postmodernism.

I think this is an arbitrary judgment regardless of the current status of the development of Chinese art. From awareness to operation, the gap is still quite obvious, and many lessons need to be made up. Even if the artistic concepts of modernism are outdated, the wisdom and creativity, imagination and methods gathered in the modernist art period, the purification and boundaries of various types of art, and the clear distinction between various artistic methods will not be outdated and will always be Will not go out of style.

At the same time, there are also some people who keep talking about "photography itself", but it sounds more like a non-serious language gimmick. Photography has its own grammar, but our research on how photography has its own grammar is still lacking. As a visual art, photography has its own morphemes and language. It is not that we cannot borrow morphemes and language methods from other categories of art, but we cannot regard the language symbols and speech logic of other arts as photography. For example, many of the entries were a juxtaposition of two photos. This is the narrative method of literature, not the method of photography. Similarly, those who try to impress you with words - slogans, Chinese characters - also belong to another set of language and are also a kind of pseudo-visual expression.