Why do people in China like landscape photography?

When photography was invented, Nipps's first photograph was also a landscape photography. That's because there is no way. Eight hours of exposure can only focus on the still scenery. With the development of photography technology, the exposure time has been reduced to half an hour, but the landscape-oriented situation has not been fundamentally changed. So there was no essential difference between photography and painting at that time. In addition, photos are mainly visual products of artists' creative materials, and the pursuit of painting effect has become a photographer's creative pursuit for a while. This situation was not changed until the invention of film photosensitive materials based on animal glue. The exposure time is greatly shortened, and people can capture the instantaneous scene through the camera. Therefore, the characteristics of photography as a modern means of communication have finally emerged. It is not only an aesthetic means, but also a means of information dissemination. People in Europe can learn about the life of the lower classes and the royal life in China through photos. In fact, when photography was not perfect, photographers had already recorded the Crimean War and the American Civil War. This is the historical track for photography to get rid of the beautiful scenery and embark on the ontological characteristics. To sum up, photography is photography, photography is not painting, photography has its own theme and expression. Since photography was introduced into China, this feature of photography itself has not been accepted by Chinese people for a long period of time. Except for a few intellectuals such as Zhuang Xueben, most scholars fiddle with China's ancient poems with cameras. Among them, Lang Jingshan, who is famous for his intensive cultivation, is a master. Today, we can see that Lang Jingshan's intensive photography is actually a collage of various photographic materials by using darkroom techniques such as multiple exposures, creating an image visual art of China's classical poems and paintings, rather than photography in the real sense. Just as we collectively refer to conceptual visual art as photography today, it is just a compromise title that is difficult to classify contemporary art. The first picture is Lang Jingshan's "Qifeng in Spring Trees", which was shot at 1934. This work was selected for the first time in the British photography salon, which established his international status. From then on, Lang Jingshan became famous. His future photography activities are mainly aimed at winning medals in salon photography competitions in Europe and America, which has become a trend of photography in China and still haunts my mind. The 1930s was an era of complicated political situation in the world, and it was also an eventful year for China. Reporting photography with social concern and intervention as a tool was popular in Europe and America as early as the early 20th century. However, photographers in China are still playing romantic and sad image games. They are not so much photographers as ancient China literati and darkroom technicians who use cameras instead of pen and ink. Strangely, since the May 4th Movement, China has really entered the process of "modernization", and literature, fine arts, music and other artistic fields have all undergone "modernity" transformation. Why does photography, the most modern thing, remain at such a traditional level in China? Is it because photographic equipment is expensive and can only be used by wealthy idle literati? Or is China's deep-rooted cultural habits of agricultural civilization leading to a lack of understanding of photography produced by industrial civilization? Maybe both. This is an intriguing topic. After 49 years, landscape photography, especially the interesting landscape photography of Sharon, was severely hit by the government. The so-called red photography is mainly news photography based on the new social outlook of New China and the upsurge of socialist construction. The so-called news photography in this period actually catered to the official ideology and cancelled political propaganda and mobilization photography from the perspective of personalization. The protagonist is the broad masses of workers, peasants and soldiers who turn over as masters, and is full of a single photographic language with Gao Daquan as its aesthetic interest. During this period, there were also "landscape photography" that praised the mountains and rivers of the motherland and reflected the natural transformation of socialism, and there were also landscapes endowed with political metaphors. Zhang Dian's "The Sound of Mountains and Rivers" and Ao's "Rape Flowers" are easily reminiscent of contradictory prose landscape talks. Man can transform nature and even become a socialist nature. This view of nature is also visually expressed through photography. Huang Xiang's Huangshan Mountain after Rain is a typical work, which reflects many beautiful mountains and rivers of the motherland and has become an artistic theme. Yuan's "Dongfanghong", the photographic language formed by wide-angle, looking up and multiple exposures, symbolically constructed a new aesthetic paradigm. Li Jin's fairy cave. This is a story-telling work. The author Li Jin is actually the pseudonym of Jiang Qing. She was once obsessed with photography and asked Shi, a senior photographer of Xinhua News Agency, to be the director. This post-production work was once regarded as a landscape photography reflecting the spirit of revolutionary optimism because of Mao Zedong's poems. Mao Zedong wrote an inscription in 196 1: "Looking at Jinsong at dusk, flying in the clouds is still calm. Born in Xiandong, countless scenery is in the dangerous peak. " Five years later, the Cultural Revolution broke out. From 1949 to the Cultural Revolution, landscape photography reformed the photography interest of the salon, was endowed with political metaphors and ideological symbols, and was also cancelled from personalized viewing, becoming a stereotyped visual product. After the Cultural Revolution, it was not until the period of reform and opening up that photographic equipment gradually entered thousands of households. In addition to being souvenirs of family photos, some intellectuals still take landscape photography as their main theme. The rural scenery in the suburbs of the city and the scenery during the trip are the subjects that photographers take pains to shoot. Generally speaking, except for the breakthrough creation of a few photography teams, it is still difficult to change that beautiful salon habit. Today, this wind has been blowing harder and harder. It is not difficult for us to see those unnatural natural scenery on the internet, which has changed beyond recognition after exaggerated post-production. Having said that, I can't help but return to the title of this article. It is not so much why people in China like landscape photography as why people in China can't get rid of the stereotype of landscape photography. If landscape photography represented by Lang Jingshan is the traditional literati's self-entertainment outside the society, it caters to the hegemony of western discourse; Then 49 years later, it was the submission and submission to political discourse. Until today, the context and visual logic have not changed. We in China are far from being adapted to photography, a product of industrial civilization from other countries, and have established our own characters. Our visual soul is still an idyllic agricultural civilization in our bones.