Wupu Ao was born in Shanxi

Wu Pu Ao, male, born in September 1959 in Shanxi, 21 years in the army, now working in China Aviation Oil. 1981 began photography, member of the Chinese Photographers Association, member of the Chinese Society of Artistic Photography, member of the Chinese Folklore Photography Association, China People's Photography Association, executive director of the Chairman of the Shanxi Provincial Photographers Association, has been held at home and abroad many times in the personal photography exhibition, many photographs have been collected by museums, won the gold, silver and bronze awards of various national photography competitions more than a hundred times, known as "desperate Wulang" in the industry. He has held many personal photography exhibitions both at home and abroad, and many of his photographs have been collected by museums, and he has won more than a hundred gold, silver and bronze prizes in all kinds of photography competitions in China, and has been regarded as "Desperate Wulang" by people in the field. Experts and scholars praise and affirmation, for the inheritance of Chinese history and culture has left a valuable treasure.

Chinese Name: Wu Pu Ao

Nationality: Chinese

Ethnicity: Chinese

Birthplace: Yuncheng, Shanxi

Date of Birth: 1958

Occupation: Chairman of Shanxi Photographers' Association

Major Achievements: More than one hundred prizes from National Photography Contests

Representative Works: Wu Pu Ao's Mural Photography Exhibition Photography Exhibition

Personal Life

Beginning of the transmission of the great beauty of Wupu Ao and Shanxi ancient mural photography

1 Origin

May 21, 2013, when browsing microblogging, @ Central Academy of Fine Arts, a message caught my attention:

"'Another eye to know the Family treasures' 100 ancient mural sites in Shanxi Province to pick up the British exhibition is on display in the Museum of Fine Arts, 3rd floor B exhibition hall, exhibition until May 25th. The exhibition selected Wu Pu Ao shot more than 300 photographs of mural sites in Shanxi Province on display. The exhibition pictures record all the ancient mural painting sites of as many as 200 temples, ancient temples and villages in Shanxi from the Northern Qi Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty, covering religious art, politics, economy, farming, theater and many other dimensions of different historical periods in the ancient Shanxi region."

Another Eye Recognizes Family Treasures. Ancient mural paintings in Shanxi. These two sets of keywords touched my professional nerve. Then "Baidu". Artist Mr. Cui Zimer's microblogging on May 19, 2013: "See what kind of ball this one above is playing? In the Yuan Dynasty murals at the Water God Temple in Hongdong County, Shanxi, you can see Chinese people playing golf in the Yuan Dynasty. Some of the best murals have become dust and smoke, photography has become a unique edition." Moving the mouse, there is this follow-up: "Shocking! Viewing the exhibition, one can have a deeper understanding of the great achievement of folk traditional painting. Artists look at the methods of composition, the use of lines, traditional techniques, etc. Art historians will favor the development of figure painting, the changing times of images and other perspectives. In the face of these clear photos of murals that are 'one step below the real thing', the purpose of 'another eye' should be achieved, right?". From the news pictures also saw Zhou Lingzhao, Jin Shangyi, Chang Shana, Hou Yimin, Yuan Yunfu, Ouyang Zhongshi, Xu Bing, Yang Xiaoyang, Chen Danqing and other famous painters and art educators went to the exhibition and praised the ancient murals in Shanxi. Poet and calligrapher Liu Zheng made a "Song of Sanjin Mural Painting" for this purpose. Sculptor, calligrapher, artist Qian Shaowu, artist He Jiaying after viewing the exhibition praised: "can be said to be a lifetime of spectacular." I decided to interview this photographer of Shanxi origin.

Search, inquire. Stated the motive for the interview. About an hour later, when I dialed Mr. Wu's cell phone number, a hoarse Mandarin with a slight Jinnan accent came through: "Sorry, I'm not in Taiyuan. I'm at home. Mother died."

Originally, on May 19, 2013, "beautiful Shanxi - another eye to know the family treasures" "100 ancient mural sites in Shanxi Province to pick up the English exhibition" opening day, Wu Pu Ao 87-year-old mother passed away. He hurried to his hometown - Shanxi Yuncheng. "In two days I have to go to Beijing again. When the photography exhibition is over and I return to Taiyuan, I'll call and contact you." His voice sounded a bit tired.On May 27, 2013, I received a call from Mr. Wu at around 4:00 p.m. and arranged to meet him the next morning.On May 28, 2013, a light rain fell. At 9:00 a.m., he picked me up in his car and drove me to his organization, China Aviation Oil Co. Shanxi Branch, located at Wuxu Airport.

Before the interview, I did my homework and saw a message "China Aviation Oil People Know Family Treasures from Another Eyes", and knew that Mr. Wupu Ao worked for China Aviation Oil Corporation, but when I saw the name on the business card he handed to me with the small words "General Manager, Party Secretary", I didn't expect to see that Mr. Wupu Ao was a member of China Aviation Oil Corporation. But when I saw his name on the card, "General Manager, Party Secretary", "I didn't expect" almost came out of my mouth.

He is thinner than in the news photos and has a strict, capable demeanor. "I joined the army at 18. 21 years in the Army." No wonder, a very specific mixed air.

2 Cherished

Central Academy of Fine Arts network in the afternoon of the opening ceremony on May 19, 2013, after the academic symposium record, there is a paragraph: Mr. Yuan Yunsheng from the perspective of the "Chinese dream" talked about the cultural to realize the "Chinese dream Mr. Yuan Yunsheng said from the perspective of "China's dream" that in order to realize "China's dream" culturally, there is an urgent need for us not only to preserve the traditional outstanding works, but also to inherit the spirit and humanistic values behind them.

Chinese mural painting in the Shang Dynasty, Zhou Dynasty, Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty, the surviving ancient frescoes in terms of surface area can be called the world's largest.

The ancient people's days are long and slow, seems to live more "art", there is always let us marvel at the elaborate beauty. They went around to paint beautiful murals, randomly sprinkled, not even need to outline beforehand, the carriage parade, the court ladies, all the spirit.

Shanxi is one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, the total number of existing ancient murals more than 24,000 square meters, the number of its long history, the fine art, second to none in the country, is the essence of China's cultural heritage, but also the development of Shanxi's cultural valuable resources.

Shanxi ancient murals, there is a mural is highly respected by experts, that is, Fanshi Yanshan Temple of the Jin Dynasty mural "restaurants and marketplace map", many experts call it the wall of the "Qingming Shanghe Tu". Experts say that if this painting is painted on a scroll, it is comparable to the "Riverside Scroll at Qingming". Jishan Qinglong Temple mural painting is regarded as a masterpiece of Yuan and Ming Dynasty paintings. The Seven Buddhas of Xinghua Temple, which is now in the Palace Museum in Beijing, is the work of Zhu Hao Gu, a famous painter of the Yuan Dynasty, and his disciple, Zhang Bo Yuan, with a very high level of painting, quite similar to the Eighty-Seven Gods and Immortals Scrolls painted by Wu Daozi of the Tang Dynasty. Yongle Palace frescoes are set of successive generations of frescoes, especially directly inherited the Tang Dynasty religious frescoes of the character modeling open, proportions rigorous, meticulous brushwork, gestures vivid, clothing pattern smooth, majestic style of the Tang Dynasty, specifically said to fully inherited the Tang Dynasty orthodox school of painting traditions, represented by Wu Daozi. Therefore, the Yongle Palace murals for deciphering the peak period of Chinese religious figure painting Tang Dynasty murals provide a good facsimile. It carries on the past and starts the future, shaking the ancient and heartbreaking the present, following the past and opening up the future. Not only independent of the "yuan four" literati landscape painting, become an independent religious figure painting system, and is the final end of Chinese religious murals.

In Mr. Wu Pu Ao's office, he showed me the album brought back from Beijing, and the honorary president of the China Mural Painting Society, the exhibition's chief planner, Mr. Hou Yimin's handwritten speech at the opening ceremony: "Wu Pu Ao is my friend. Over the decades he has taken tens of thousands of pictures of ancient murals in Shanxi. I have also been to Shanxi, Shanxi murals most representative of course is the Yongle Palace. But when I saw the pictures he took, I was shocked. In the face of these mural remains, I think of is, quite a lot of Shanxi mural paintings, painting is really too good, not one or two places to paint good, and not generally good, but really too good!"

Mr. Wu took out two more volumes of work, carefully spread on the ground. I saw: Taiyuan City, Duo Fu Temple Ming Dynasty murals, showing the welcome rituals, friends salute each other and hunting in the mountains and other life scenes; Hongdong County, the Water God Temple murals of miscellaneous dramas and reflect the customs and folklore of the Pingyang area of the sale of fish, whacking pills, chess, etc., to show the secular life of the scroll.

Mr. Wupu Ao, for more than 30 years, has visited many sites in Shanxi province that are difficult to be seen by ordinary people, and has taken nearly 10,000 large-format films involving murals from the Han Dynasty, Tang Dynasty, and the Five Dynasties to the Song Dynasty, Liao Dynasty, Jin Dynasty, Yuan Dynasty, Ming Dynasty, and Qing Dynasty. He has restored the ancient murals of Shanxi Province in a new form, and gathered the things scattered in the folklore together, so as to make the murals become the contents that can be seen, touched, and learnt. Recorded the tradition at the same time, but also let him see the present-day murals due to poor protection and serious dilapidation. He opened the computer, while clicking on a piece of work shot, said to me, "you see, due to the natural and man-made factors and endowed with the environmental changes, these rare and rare cultural relics have been seriously affected by the emergence of fracture, armoring, hollow drums, crisp alkali, peeling, pollution and other diseases, there are a considerable part of the danger of serious. I am hoping to take the opportunity of this exhibition, so that the ancient murals in Shanxi are better protected, so that more people know these precious heritage left to us by our ancestors."

"On the afternoon of May 25, as we were preparing to withdraw the exhibition, a German scholar who studies murals stood for three hours, grasping the last time to watch." He pointed it out to me.

And it is true that we have not yet moved our cherished eyes to these thousand-year-old paintings.

3. Shimmering light

After all, it is the responsibility of the artist, the reverence, the constant shimmering light of these long periods of time, that is more worth pursuing, isn't it?

Wu Pu Ao in the army as a soldier fell in love with photography, after the transfer is the use of holidays and spare time many times to and from Beijing and the field of a lot of shooting sites, almost all of their transfer fees, wages and bonuses for photography consumption. 2009 he returned to Shanxi to work, his wife is not assured of his health, and sometimes come from Beijing to Taiyuan to take care of him, but he is either down to the countryside to shoot, or in the den Check the information. Mr. Wu's close friend, the famous calligrapher Mr. Yang Zaichun, recorded in one of his blogs, "At a photography exhibition, I went to Mrs. Pou Ao specifically and said a bunch of words of gratitude to her. Without the understanding and support of his family, it would have been difficult for him to achieve what he did today. He has severe diabetes, yet he rarely cares about himself and is always willing to help others. Every time you go out to collect wind, Wu Pu Ao own photographic equipment weighs dozens of pounds, but still grabbed my camera bag to climb mountains. Recently, he has really lost a lot of weight, but his vigor is still not comparable to that of other people." There is also a blog post written on August 22, 2011: "Say again last week to go to Shuozhou, Shanxi Province, Chongfu Temple to shoot the Golden Age murals, more than a thousand years to preserve so far is not easy ah, my good friend, photographer Wu Pu Ao, such as desperately like the three boys, to all the ancient murals in Shanxi with the 8 × 10 film to shoot the end. He said he wanted to race against time, day by day in the damage ah!"

Mr. Wu Pu Ao is known as "Desperate Wu_" in the photography circle. "This stems from my experience as a child. When I was in middle school, I lived in school, my family was poor, and every time I went to school, I could only bring a small bag of raw sweet potatoes, and I didn't even have the money to pay for the school's food. So, from a young age has developed a self-reliant character, encounter any difficulties are their own way to solve, coupled with 21 years of military career, no matter what you do have a fight to the end of the drive. Once, in order to go back to Shanxi to shoot, family leave has just been approved, can not wait to put on the satchel on the train, to the station and then non-stop walking dozens of kilometers, 6 days in a row have not rested, really do not achieve the goal of the strength of not stopping. 1999 May, I went to the mountains to take pictures with two friends, the face of the mountain highway has not yet been repaired, we carry heavy photographic equipment on foot to climb the mountain, when the estimated mountain road is not possible! How high and far, I took glucose pills in advance, I did not expect a walk is 8 hours, this is bad, to the mountains after the white face, the whole body sweating, the sky in front of me, blood sugar is too low. I sat on the ground, thinking that this is over. My friends rushed to stuff sugar and chocolate into my mouth, and it took me more than half an hour to get over it. When I think about it now, I'm still a little scared."

"Chinese fresco historical outline" "Oriental fresco historical outline" "Lectures on Chinese and foreign art history" and other professional books and county histories around Shanxi, in Mr. Wu Pu Ao's four bookcases accounted for a considerable amount of space. Mural photography, Wu Pu Ao has a unique insight: "Mural photography is different from the general subject matter, it is through the documentary characteristics of photography, reproducing the artistic value of ancient murals, so authenticity is the first element. I have to prepare carefully before shooting, study carefully, to be familiar with the subject of the essentials, according to the content of the performance to determine the picture, choose the machine and lens. Usually I use 4 × 5 or 8 × 10 large format camera, the advantage of this camera is that the front and back of the frame can be lifted and lowered, left and right can be shifted, adjusted in the shooting process due to the different angles of the lens on the frescoes to be photographed and the perspective distortion, and with a smaller aperture to ensure that the depth of field of the frescoes and before and after the scope of clarity. Lens selection and people's visual habits in line with the standard head is the best. More importantly, the second element is the color reproduction should be accurate. Both to show the unique texture of the ancient murals of the soil and the time of the sealing of the dust abrasive, but also to reflect the ancient fresco form lines and elegant colors. This requires in the shooting process, must master the shooting angle and light. I often choose the camera and mural parallel shooting, the choice of reflectors to brighten the light source, for which I made five or six oversized reflectors, more side light, to enhance the depth of the mural. When shooting, remember to strictly prohibit exaggeration, distortion and modification. The third element is to ensure clarity. In the shooting must use a tripod, which is conducive to the composition and focus, to avoid the jitter caused by handheld shooting, and truly present the solemnity, serenity, heaviness and simplicity of the ancient murals of the artistic characteristics."

Mr. Wupu Ao shoots a wide range of subjects, he likes to innovate and pursue perfection, and has also won hundreds of awards. He said, "Photography has made me realize life, understand society and know art."

Beautiful Shanxi - another eye to recognize the family treasures, "Shanxi Province, hundreds of ancient mural sites to pick up Ying exhibition" will also be displayed in the provincial capital. After that, Mr. Wu Pu Ao will give all the exhibits to the Chinese Mural Painting Society. "I want to build a house for these murals photography!" Old Mr. Hou Yimin exclaimed, waving his hand at the end of his opening speech.

4. Echo

I think, if you can be y moved by someone or something or a situation, can mostly be understood as echo logic. Inside or destiny. After interviewing Mr. Wupo Ao this week, in such a logical system, on such a factual correlation, it is the world in a friendly role, but each scene says you, it is me.

"Please take a different perspective, from the perspective of painting, from the perspective of art history, especially from the perspective of the development of Chinese figure painting, to re-examine these precious remains with 'another eye'". I seem to have heard these earnest words from Mr. Hou Yimin.

There are more echoes that we have yet to gather. They have been ringing softly, and perhaps you will hear them tomorrow.

Personal experience

May 19, 2013Wu Pu'ou's mural photography exhibition "Another Eye for Family Treasures" will be displayed at the Central University of Fine Arts (CUFA)

October 9, 2013Photographer Wu Pu'ou held a photography seminar "Another Eye for Family Treasures"

November 12, 2013 Photographer Wu Pu'ou was invited by Hantoo Images to give a lecture on "Shanxi History and Photographic Art" at Shanxi Art Museum