EVOLUTION--2007 GUANGZHOU PHOTO BIENNIAL

Exhibition Date: May 17th17:30--July 8th,2007
Venue: Guangdong Museum of Art

Organization: Guangdong Museum of Art
Co-organization: Fotoe.com

Curators:
SI Sushi Joseph FUNG Alain SAYAG CAI Tao

Program of the opening day:
Press conference (Experts’ Club):16:30-17：30
Opening ceremony (Entrance Hall):17:30-18:30
Exhibition Visit till 20:00

Symposium:
Theme: Chinese Contemporary Photography during past 30 years
Mediated by: BAO Kun
Time: 9:30-18:00,May 18th, 2007

FOREWORD

    Guangzhou Photo Biennial, was initiated in 2005, with its basic principles of maintaining both international and humanized perspectives of image sociology, to participate and promote development of contemporary Chinese photography and culture. The overall theme of the first biennial was “Re (-) viewing the city”, focusing on the problems of urban development in the process of modernization and man’s double statuses in such a context both as a “viewer” and a “viewee”. Photography verbalizes the issues in an expressively unique and direct language, and, as a result, the First Guangzhou Photo Biennial gained the massive attention and favorable comments. Now the publicly expected second biennial, the 2007 Guangzhou Photo Biennial has finally arrived. The main theme of this biennial is entitled “Evolution”, shifting its focus from the topic of space to time in an effort to highlight and characterize the highly effective dynamic visual text communications within the self-defined framework of Chinese contemporary photography history. A tentative study on the issues of generation, division, transformation and evolution of the contemporary diversified photography, and the interactive and responsive patterns generated between Chinese photographers, artists and the attractions of alien cultures against the coming internationalized background has become the major academic goal advanced for the biennial.
    As the title “A View: Left & Right” of the biennial reveals, the message conveyed inside is primarily the idea of “authenticity originated from visual overlapping”: our inborn visual characteristics defines that only by overlapping of both left and right eyes’ vision can a “real” authentic visual world be formed. However, only when the images captured by different eyes and from various angles have been collected and combined, can its world exemplified be deemed as authentic, believable and representative, no matter what it implies --- a big world of human society or just a small world of photography. It is expected in this biennial that a close-to-fact possible reality and a human internal world, and the factual history of contemporary photography can be reproduced with the helping hand of multi-dimensional focuses and representations of visual and photo images. It is also our intention to extend the theme so as to include the “limited boundless vision” and “utterly different visual orientations” etc. This is to mean that Chinese photographers, trapped in the field formed by traditional values, domestic photography status quo and the imported standards, have been tangled up by cultural attractions from different directions. Their views very often are forced to drift under the pressure of their environment, and their unique perspective is thus shaped in consequence. It also reflects a fundamental value division of the contemporary photography ------ two utterly different orientations: “photographing for photography’s sake” and “photographing for art’s sake”. This virtually broadens the horizon of the Chinese contemporary photography in question and promotes its development as well.
    It is commonly acknowledged that Chinese contemporary photography began in the late 1970s of the last century, a time of the political turning point in China. For about 30 years, the consistent, extensive, diversified and utterly distinctive practices of Chinese photographers have framed a bountiful and colorful scene of the contemporary photography history, which makes it possible for us to comprehensively review this period of time today. Here, we do not attempt to have an overview of the long period of the contemporary photography history. What we envisage at the stage is to remind people to give more academic concern and public rationality to contemporary photography by means of exhibitions, seminars, and relevant publications as is provided by the “Guangzhou Photo Biennial”, and, what’s more, to have them involved in defining and characterizing the changing history of the Chinese photography culture and promoting its development.
    The biennial is divided into two sections: theme exhibition and special exhibition. There are nine units for the former, to respectively illustrate the various historical “dimensions” explicable and rather representative of the Chinese contemporary photography within the framework of “Evolution”. From Salon to the common public, and from documentary to conceptual, over 40 Chinese photographers of different styles have signed up for the exhibition, presenting their representative works of different stages and seeking after the critical turning points and phenomena in the contemporary history of photography. As the exhibited works are classified, categorized and chronological labeled, the “evolutionary” process of Chinese contemporary photography will be converted into a vivid miniature. The aesthetic traces and patterns disguised behind the miscellaneous historical phenomena, the indistinctive rhythms of change in the hurly-burly, and the logical connection in the artistic creations that was cut in strict accordance with dogmatic formality, are likely to be explicitly expressed through the “Evolution”.
    The latter includes three units, namely, “ping-pong”, “contemporary cite” and “Spanish contemporary photography”.

Participating Artists:

TCHAN Fou-Li
1916 Born in Chao'an of Guangdong
Currently lives in Hong Kong, China

KAN Hing Fook
1921 Born in Hong Kong
Currently lives in Hong Kong, China

Leo K.K. WONG
Currently lives in Hong Kong, China

WANG Miao
1951 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Hong Kong, China

LUO Xiaoyun
1953 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

CHU Xiaoqing
1953 Born in Wenzhou of Zhejiang
Currently lives and works in Lishui of Zhejiang, China

LING Fei
1953 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Beijing and Paris

BAO Kun
1953 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

WU Shixiong
1950 Born in Guangzhou
Currently lives and works in Shenzhen, China

WANG Zhiping
1947 Born in Linqing of Shandong, China
Currently lives in Aix-en-Provence, France

HE Yanguang
1951 Born in Shanxi
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

LI Nan
1961 Born in Jinan
Currently lives and works in Jinan, China

WANG Jingchun
1969 Born in Xi'an
Currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China

JU Yang
1969 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

YU Yuntian
1950 Born in Jiuquan of Gansu
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

CHE Fu
1946 Born in Dandong of Liaoning
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

REN Guo'en
Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

NIU Bendong
Currently lives and works in Shenzhen, China

CHENG Shang-His
1937 Born in Kee Luag, Taiwan
Currently lives in Taipei, Taiwan

QIU Liang
Used to lived and worked in Hong Kong

CHANG Chao-Tang
1943 Born in Banqiao, Taiwan
Currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan

JUAN I-Jong
1950 Born in Yilan, Taiwan
Currently lives and works in Taipei, Taiwan

LEONG Ka Tai
1946 Born in Hong Kong
Currently lives and works in Hong Kong, China

HU Wugong
1949 Born in Xi'an
Currently lives and works in Xi'an, China

An Ge
1947 Born in Dalian
Currently lives in Guangzhou, China

LV Nan
1962 Born in Beijing
Currently lives and works in Kunming, China

WANG Zheng
1962 Born in Xiji of Ningxia
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

YU Deshui
1953 Born in Zhoukou of Henan
Currently lives and works in Zhengzhou, China

HEI Ming
1964 Born in Yan'an, Shanxi
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

ZHANG Hai'er
1957 Born in Guangzhou
Currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China

ZHOU Ming
1960 Born in Xi'an
Currently lives and works in Shanghai, China

FU Yu
1968 Born in Xicheng of Liaoning
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

WEI Lai
1973 Born in Jilin
Currently lives and works in Changchun, China

FENG Li
1971 Born in Chengdu
Currently lives and works in Chengdu, China

LUO Dan
1968 Born in Chongqing
Currently lives in Chengdu, China

WEI Bi
1969 Born in Hunan
Currently lives and works in Dalian, China

QUAN Nanhai
1957 Born in Shantou of Guangdong
Currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China

MENG Minsheng
1919 Born in Guangzhou
Currently lives in Hong Kong, China

SO Hing Keung
1959 Born in Hong Kong
Currently lives and works in Hong Kong, China

YAN Changjiang
1968 Born in Zigui of Hubei
Currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China

WANG Guofeng
1967 Born in Liaoning
Currently lives in Beijing, China

YAN Shi
1975 Born in Shenyang of Liaoning
Currently lives and works in Guangzhou, China

MENG Jin
1973 Born in Chongqing
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

FENG Yan
1963 Born in Xi'an
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

ZENG Li
1961 Born in Liuzhou of Guangxi
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

CHEN Nong
1966 Born in Fujian
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

Jules ITIER
French custom officer, one of the first foreigner who
took photos in China.

Patrick BAILLY-MAITRE-GRAND
Born in 1945, photographer of Strasbourg, France.

JIANG Jian
1953 Born in Kaifeng of He Nan
Currently lives and works in Zhengzhou, China

CANG Xin
1967 Born in Hei Longjiang
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

WANG Dabin
Born in 1959
Currently lives and works in Dalian, China

Alain FLEISCHER
1944 Born in Paris, France
Currently lives and works in Paris, France

YU Yang
1978 Born in Jinan
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

Bettina RHEIMS
1952 Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, France

QIU Zhijie
1969 Born in Zhangzhou of Fujian
Currently lives and works in Beijing, China

Bogdan KONOPKA
1953 Born in Poland
Currently lives and works in Paris, France

LUO Yongjin
1960 Born in Beijing, China
Currently lives and works in Shanghai, China

Matthew PILLSBURY
1973 Born in Neuilly, France
Currently Lives in New York, USA

Julia FULLERTON-BATTEN
Born in Germany
Currently lives in London, UK

Cynthia CAPPE
Born in 1977
Currently lives in Paris, France

Emilie di NUNZIO
Born in 1976
Currently lives in Paris, France

Banya SIM
1976 Born in Seoul, Korea
Currently lives in Paris, France

Shai KREMER
1974 Born in Israel
Currently lives in New York, USA

Alain LEBACQUER
Born in 1960
Currently lives in Paris, France

Marie-Noelle BOUTIN
1971 Born in Sainte Catherine-les-Arras, France
Currently lives in Lille, France

Christian LUTZ
1973 Born in Geneva, Suisse
Currently lives in Geneva, Suisse

Pascale PEYRET
Currently lives in Paris, France

Joakim ENEROTH
1969 Born in Stockholm
Currently lives in Sweden

Alain CORNU
Born in1966
Currently lives in Paris, France

Patrizia di FIORE
1961 Born in Cremona, Italy
Currently lives in Paris, France

Arja HYYTIAINEN
1974 Born in Finland
Currently lives in Paris, France

María Bleda
1970 Born in Castellón

José María Rosa
1969 Born in Albacete

Ferran FREIXA
1950 Born in Barcelona

Alberto GARCIA-ALIX
1956 Born in Leon

Cristina GARCIA-RODERO
1949 Born in Puertollano (Ciudad Real)

Cristobal HARA
1946 Born in Madrid

Chema MADOZ
1958 Born in Madrid

Angel MARCOS
1955 Born in Valladolid

Ouka LELE
1957 Born in Madrid

Xavier RIBAS
1960 Born in Barcelone

Javier VALLHONRAT
1953 Born in Madrid