Hou Dengke's works

Hou Dengke's representative works include Children (1983), Adults (1983), Expedition (1986), Sifang City (1997) and Mike (200). 1987 participated in initiating and organizing the national public photography contest "Hard Journey" which has great influence on the photography industry in China, and the planning of the large-scale photography album "Forty Years of Photography in China"; He has published such long literary theories as Present Situation and Thinking (1986), Conscious Course (1987) and In the Name of Reality (1999). Mike is the name of the northwest people, that is, another group of villagers who help villagers cut wheat during the summer harvest. Maikeduo came from Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia provinces, and migrated to eastern Guanzhong, Lintong to Tongguan County, banks of Weihe River and rivers. Before People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded, Mike relied on their feet, physical strength and endurance. During the day, they "rush to the sun" and at night "change places" to cover the stars and the moon. It is not a problem for dozens of miles. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, with the change of traffic conditions, they no longer need to walk thousands of miles to catch up with the scene; After 1980, Mike came by train, bus and bus, wearing a watch on his wrist. With the implementation of the rural responsibility field, Mike ushered in its golden age; Since1990s, the harvester has gradually seized Mike's territory, and its "scale operation" trend has gradually shrunk.

Hou Dengke spent several years tracking and photographing these brotherly Mike, and recorded the golden age of Mike and the process of Mike's rise and fall in wickerwork with his camera. His works, which do not emphasize visual impact and quickness, are simple and simple, but thick and harsh, and full of rich flavor of the Loess Plateau. ...

Yang Xiaoyan, an art critic, said in his article Their History: "Mike is a group of people who live outside the' historical narrative'. The history of the mainstream society is "our history", and Hou Dengke tried to describe "their history" with a lens, so that "their history" evolved into "the history they reflected". City of Four Sides is a photo collection published by three Shaanxi photographers, Hu Wugong, Hou Dengke and Qiu Xiaoming, on 1997. The shooting location is Xi 'an. "Sifang City" comes from the head-up perspective of Xi 'an city wall shot by three photographers, staring at ordinary people, recording the real life state of Xi 'an public with the mentality of modern urbanites, so as to reflect the regional cultural landscape in a specific time and space.

Jia Pingwa commented: "It is rare to record people's lives in a city with such great enthusiasm and unpretentious lens in the history of photography in China. In these works, the relationship between people and the city, between people, between people and the city and the times can show such a rich history, philosophy and artistry! " Hou Dengke always had a wish: to photograph the women on the yellow land, to repay the women who gave him life and to pay tribute to his mother and wife, but he died young and failed to see his wish come true. In the two years after his death, his friends helped him realize this dream-Hou Dengke's posthumous exhibition "Women on the Yellow Land".

One comment said: "Hou Dengke loves life. He knows women and is good at shooting women, so there are many women in his pictures: gentle women, gentle women, plump women, elegant women, depressed women, capable women, poor women ... He walked through the green corridor of women and realized the roots of life from them. Feel the whole flow of vibrating life. Women are the reliance that led him to rise spiritually from an early age. "