How to understand contemporary photography

1. How should a photographer determine his identity? What do you think of your relationship with photography and your relationship with the subject matter? What do you think of your position in the communication field? 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 that many photographers now pay too much attention to their identity as photographers, and do not hesitate to put this identity in front of all the above. In this way, photography itself, the subject matter of photography and the spread of photography are just "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 understand photography, society, and how photography contacts and influences the audience through communication. They take the means of "profit"-to get the maximum benefit at the lowest possible cost, and they are opportunistic and ignore the dignity of thought and photography. To what extent? Just look at these headlines. As soon as the theme of On the Road was confirmed, many people took such a title: mass sports on the road, Shenzhen to Jinan, migrant workers on the road, investors on the road … away from photography and reality. I feel that a really serious photographer must be someone who hides behind facts and images, is cautious in thinking and quick in action, and will not take "himself" too seriously.

2. What is photography? Other teachers think that "Xu Cup" should expand its participation, open its doors and go international. These views are all good, and these questions all point to the same question: how do we understand contemporary photography?

The organizers of the first "Xu Cup" set up two categories, one is record category and the other is art category, but this time we decided to cancel this category after discussion. This is also based on the understanding of contemporary photography.

In fact, in contemporary times, documentaries and art have all come together. The artist Bing Xu once said: I know that good things can kill people. Those things that directly see life, no matter how you present them, are all good works of art. The technical, comprehensive, open and democratic nature of photography determines that it must make great achievements in this direction. The really powerful photography is to pay attention to the current problems, trends, life and human destiny. Really good photographic works are usually personalized and personalized expressions of public themes. But how many of the works that participated in the selection have this feature? For example, how much do those flowers, grass and old streets have to do with now? What does it have to do with individuals and personalities?

3. What should the photo be? A photo should be the result of thinking and the way photography presents it. From this point of view, I am not optimistic: most people still can't take pictures. This time, the author of a group of photos reflecting the pollution in Bohai Bay is from Shandong, so you think he is very satisfied with the behavior of "walking", but he doesn't think enough about how to take penetrating photos in this process-many photos are like this, putting the cart before the horse.

What is a set of photos? This is related to picture editing and visual communication. We can see that photo editing is really worrying, which is also an old problem, but it must be the key factor that hinders the development of photography, because the group photo with chaotic visual logic can not smoothly convey the information and ideas it carries. If we hold the "Xu Bei" youth photography workshop next time, we might as well consider a special photography editing workshop. Photo editing is very practical, and many technical details can't be solved in class, so it must be solved in practice, so-called "learning by doing".

We should be highly alert to illusions. Recently, some people claim that something is out of date, just like China's photography and western art that has gone through hundreds of years of experimental exploration, it has divorced from modernism and entered post-modernism. I think this is a rash decision regardless of the present situation of China's art development. From our understanding to our operation, the gap is still obvious, and many lessons need to be made up. Even if the artistic concept of modernism is out of date, the wisdom, creation, imagination and methods gathered in the period of modernism art, the purification of various arts and the clear division of various artistic means will never be out of date.

At the same time, some people keep saying "photography noumenon", but it sounds more like a casual language gimmick. Photography has its own grammar, but how photography has its own grammar is still quite lacking in our research. As a visual art, photography has its own morpheme and language style. It's not impossible to borrow morphemes and language styles from other kinds of arts, but we can't regard the language symbols and speech logic of other arts as photography. For example, many items are juxtaposition of two photos. This is a narrative way of literature, not a photography way. Similarly, those who try to impress you with words-slogans, Chinese characters-also belong to another set of languages and are also a kind of pseudo-visual expression.