The Gaze Portraits of contemporary masters of photography
CURATOR: WANG QING SONG
EXHIBITION TIME:ARP 28-JUL 28.2017
ADD:CHANGJIANG MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORAR ART
A photographer standing in front of Master Photographers
The first time when I knew Zhong Weixing was 2012. He won the highest award in Pingyao Photography Festival. But I didn’t have much understanding about him at that time. Five years later when I saw his work again and talked about photography with him in his studio, suddenly I had a new understanding of his perspective of photography subject, his way of photography and his interactive creation between him and the photography subject. It is not because they’re master photographers so you can take photography in a wide range, but you should comprehensively study photography, which contains rich creative elements. I felt it’s interesting so I decided to invite him to attend a special exhibition.
Zhong Weixin started to shoot series of great master’s portraits in 2015. For these foreign photographers, most of the time before we only got to know them through books or internet and had no chance to communicate with them face to face. When Zhong Weixing told me about over 60 master photographers’ portraits that he shoot, I can know who they are even though I can’t remember some of their names. However, he can remember all of their names, which made me very surprised. It is conceivable that Zhong Weixing has made great changes in rediscovering photography in the process of communicating with these masters, which also allows him to have his own unique photography language at the time of creation.
In these creations he did not try to restore the person behind the character, but to restore the feature of the photographer in his mind. His portrait works as if show a moment of the photography career of the photographer. At this point, he became a photographer standing in front of the master photographers. For portrait taken, Zhong Weixing provided us with a very diverse and very personal way of interpretation. As the finishing touch of Changjiang International Photography & Video Biennale, Zhong Weixing's "THE GAZE Portraits of Contemporary masters of Photography" Exhibition must be magnificent. I believe that the scene will certainly let a lot of people have a new understanding of shooting portrait.
The theme of the current exhibition of Changjiang International Photography & Video Biennale is “Great Oaks From Little Acorns Grow”. For Zhong Weixing, although he has shot portraits of more than 60 master photographers, his creation is still continuing. Shooting this project is constructing his ideal lofty buildings.
In the next stage after we sorting out the experience of shooting portraits of these foreign photographers, we hope that more and more Chinese photographers will appear in the “Portraits of Contemporary Photographers”.
Perhaps when we come back to review these works and evaluate its meaning five years or ten years later, we will conclude that such a grand theme, in fact, has sketched out the contours of contemporary photography history. At that time we will find that The Second Edition of Changjiang International Photography & Video Biennale, as the first station of global exhibitions for Zhong Weixing’s series of works of “THE GAZE Portraits of Contemporary masters of Photography”, it is the first brick of his lofty buildings.
Wang Qingsong
2017/4/22