How to Expand the Importance of Folk Photography in Folk Culture

Folklore, also known as folk culture, refers to a relatively stable cultural event that a nation or a social group has gradually formed and passed down from generation to generation in the long-term production time and society, and can be simply summarized as folk customs and customs. Folk culture is the general name of folk customs and culture. These material and spiritual cultural phenomena formed in the process of production and life have universality, inheritance and variability. Therefore, when shooting and recording folk activities, photographers should pay more attention to the life accumulation and cultural inheritance reflected behind these activities, rather than simple external forms.

Folk photography, first of all, should show folk characteristics, multi-directional, multi-angle selection, refining topics. Secondly, we should show the characteristics of folk photography and encourage photographers to explore and analyze deeply along a certain national theme. At the same time, it is also convenient for folk photographers to go deep into life, complete materials and systematically and completely express folk customs. Whether in form or content, folk photography is a cultural project that makes a mountain out of a molehill. It seems flat, low and small, but in fact it is high, big and high, so the special classification of each subject is very important. According to the life form of folk customs, three types of folk photography are obtained:

First, the folklore of material life.

1, production folklore (primary production of agricultural, fishery, mining, hunting, breeding and other material materials);

2, industrial and commercial folklore (handicraft industry, service industry and commercial material information processing services);

3. Folk customs of life (in terms of material consumption such as food, clothing, housing and transportation).

Second, folk customs in social life

1, Social Organization Folklore (family, village, community, etc.);

2. Festival folk customs (festivals and activities, etc.) at the age of. );

3, life customs (birth, birthday, adulthood, marriage, funeral and other aspects of life).

Third, the folklore of spiritual life.

1, entertainment folk customs (games, competitions, social fires and other entertainment);

2. Folklore (folk spiritual world represented by worship of gods, legends, stories and proverbs);

Folklore is a comprehensive discipline, including humanities, sociology, history, ethnology, anthropology and so on. Generally speaking, folk custom is an agreement in the process of social evolution, which comes from the folk but invisibly regulates people's activities. In this cross-border academic field, folk photographers can't shoot blindly. Seeing and photographing folk customs with a curious heart, staying on the surface, it is inevitable to scratch your boots. At present, many places also have performance groups that cater to this kind of film friends and tourists, and charge the so-called "folk performances" as needed. This so-called "folk culture" divorced from production and life is full of mechanical imitation and poor reproduction of old forms, and Joe's posturing is even more ironic. These "nonsense" folk activities not only subvert the history and culture, but also attract many photographers to shoot by mistake, and the value of the works can be imagined. Moreover, some photographers only pay attention to the light and shadow effect when taking folk photos, lacking the research and understanding of historical evolution and cultural inheritance, and recording the process of the cause and effect and key nodes incompletely or inaccurately. When we know a cultural phenomenon from these photos, it is also incomplete. There are still many photographers who seriously lack post-editing when expressing folk customs. We don't think from the perspective of history and documentary. We leave after shooting, lacking written records and information presentation, and it is difficult to make photos valuable.

Folk photographers should find the real theme of folk photography and make it deeper, bigger and stronger. Under the current circumstances, folk photographers should achieve three things: first, they should be professional, that is, they should be emotional; The second academic is method; The third knowledge is the result.

Folk customs exist in life and are embodied in daily activities. If you want to really shoot folk customs, you naturally have to return to life. In 1930s and 1940s, this photo album went deep into Sichuan, Yunnan, Qinghai and other ethnic minority areas with extremely inconvenient transportation at that time, conducted in-depth investigations and interviews, and took more than 10,000 photos. From birth, old age, illness, death, fatigue, festival and other dimensions, it made a detailed and wonderful record of the local people's lives at that time, leaving precious influence wealth. During more than ten years of filming, Mr. Zhuang Xueben lived with the local people in poverty-stricken areas of ethnic minorities. It can be said that it is a sense of villagers and a pleasure for villagers. The works shot by personal experience will naturally be thicker and more powerful than the current "folk custom" shooting.

Folklore is created or accepted by the group and followed by the group. Modeling must not be random, temporary and impromptu, but can usually span time and space, which makes folk customs have inheritance, extensiveness and stability.

If an activity takes place here and now, and its way of activity is not put into practice again, it is not a folk custom. Only when the way of activity transcends the situation and becomes the content that many people implement many times can it become a folk custom handed down from generation to generation.

On the other hand, folk customs are changeable. Folk custom is a life culture, not a classic culture. It has no written authority, mainly through words and deeds, passed down from generation to generation. Even under basically the same conditions, it is impossible to repeat it unscathed. In the ever-changing situation, the main body of life must make appropriate adjustments, and the folk customs will change immediately. If the time factor is highlighted, a generation or an era will inherit, change and innovate the previous folk customs. This change in time is the epochal nature of folk customs.

Everything changes and develops, and folk customs are no exception. Photographers are keen to shoot folk customs. They should not always look at the past, but pay more attention to the present. Folklore originates from our life and work. When life and work change, many folk customs will disappear or change. And this kind of change and replacement is precisely the excellent material for our photographers to record the times and show their lives.

Folk customs are by no means vulgar, but just the cultural essence that has been passed down through time accumulation and filtration. Photographers should keep up with the times and record good folk customs with the spirit of practice.

Folk photography needs written explanation. If there are no words, you may not understand them, especially when foreigners are reading China folk themes. In addition, the importance of folk photography can also be reflected in philology, history and culturology. Once a certain culture disappears, folk photography will become the basis of recovery, which is very meaningful.

It is a specialized knowledge to study the history and culture of folk custom and master its basic connotation and characteristics. He asked folk photographers to have certain cultural quality and strong folk consciousness. We must have a position, attitude and understanding. Only with understanding can we have a position, and only with a position can we have an attitude, so as to make better use of photographic sound and capture and present folk customs in a unique way.

Preserving historical memory is the responsibility of photographers, which requires us to be cultural photographers. The key problem for photographers to objectively record folk customs is their attitude and views on folk customs, express folk customs by documentary photography, grasp the various relationships between documentary photography and folk photography, and strive to cultivate their attitude towards experts and form a serious and responsible attitude. Strengthen the authenticity of folk photography and expand the diversity of folk images. A real folk photographer is not only a scholar who studies with photography, but also a learned photographer and a scholar expert.