by Shenzhan 申展
Wang Wusheng （1945 - 2018)
Huangshan A104, 1984
Taken at Lion Peak, Mount Huang
Inkjet print
on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018
I didn’t know that Mr. Wang Wusheng (汪芜生）had passed away in April until I attended the International Symposium: Photography and China at China Institute on Sep. 22, 2018. Wang’s landscape photography is a big part of the exhibition, Art of the Mountain: Through the Chinese Photographer’s Lens at the China Institute Gallery in New York from February 9, 2018 – February 17, 2019. In a sense, the symposium was truly a memorial for the late photographer.
With his great works in the gallery next door, no memorial could serve Mr. Wang better than a symposium with speakers including his close friends, scholars, photographers, and packed with a group of audience genuinely interested in China and photography. Having lived overseas in Japan and U.S. since 1980s before moving back to Shanghai in 2010, Wang is better known outside of China with his black and white “landscape photography”, poetically and artistically depicting Mount Huang (in Anhui, Wang’s home province in China), in an aesthetic form resonant with traditional Chinese landscape ink painting. Such connection is easy to establish with the juxtaposition below:
Wang Wusheng (1945-2018)
Huangshan W34, 1984
Taken at Lion Peak, Xihai area, Mount Huang
Inkjet print
on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018
Shi Yizhi (17th century)
Tiandu peak in the yellow mountains (黄山天都峰 )
Presented by Prof. Joseph Chang at the symposium
Dr. Jonathan Chaves (齐皎瀚）, a good friend of Wang and Professor of Chinese Literature at the George Washington University, pointed out, Wang’s work captures the nature and its spirit in a way rooted in the very ancient Chinese cosmological philosophy, Taiji, with yin and yang as a force-and-antiforce pair that forms the source of energy in the universe. Oddly it reminds me of Stephen Hawking’s theory on quantum physics that everything in the universe comes from the energy released from the particles and the anti-particles at the quantum level, which, in my view, fundamentally very Taoism.
In a dialogue on “Black and White Landscape Photography” between Wang and Xia Zhongyi (夏中义）, professor at China Academy of Art and Vice President of the Chinese Association of Literature and Art Theory, who flew to New York for the symposium, the feeling of awe regarding the universe is in the center. Wang talked about the moments when he was trembling in awe at his first visit to Mount Huang in 1974. He subsequently went back numerous times to capture the right moments and develop his own artistic language with his camera to articulate such emotion, and transcend others. It took him over 30 years to mature his “language” with a unique style and technique, with which he meticulously applied a pitch darkness to the body of the mountain in order to create a sharp contrast to and a powerful tension with the cloud.
Wang Wusheng (1945-2018)
Huangshan W25, 1991
Taken at Lion Peak, Mount Huang
Inkjet print
on view at China Institute Gallery in New York until February 17, 2018
To me, Wang’s photography perfectly represents how the essence of Chinese culture is expressed through a non-Chinese technology. The lens may be the product of the West, the eyes and heart behind the lens are undoubtedly Chinese. Wang was not the first Chinese photographer who successfully made such reputation internationally known. Dr. Mia Yinxing Liu, Assistant Professor in Visual Studies at the California College of the Arts, gave a rather thorough academic account on Lang Jingshan （郎静山, 1892 - 1995）, who is considered to be the first (and greatest!) professional photographer in China in 1920s and created “composite photography” (集锦摄影), a collage technique to precisely express Chinese aestheticism through photography.
Lang Jingshan (1892-1995)
A Panoramic Embrace of Landscape, 1993
unknown source online
It’s not difficult to see the similarities between Wang and Lang’s work. And it is certainly not a coincidence that while their photography is deeply rooted in Chinese tradition and culture, their work is celebrated internationally. Lang, “Father of Asian Photography", was named one of the top 10 master photographers by the Photographic Society of America in 1980. For Wang, while it is yet to know whether he would enjoy wider posthumous recognition in China, his favorite photography works are permanent collection in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, one of the top three museums in Europe. According to Prof. Xia, after passing away quite unexpectedly, Wang left behind some twenty thousand negatives in his refrigerator to be sorted out, selected and printed. Those are his “children” yet to be brought to light, literally.
A memorial without mourning would be incomplete. Indeed there was a silent mourning before the symposium started. A touching moment came when Prof. Chaves read a poem he composed for Wang, “Mourning for the Master Photographic Artist Wang Wusheng”, in Chinese Ballad form (古体诗), which I record below in traditional Chinese characters and its English translation to conclude this article:
吊攝影大師汪蕪生 diào shè yǐng dà shī wāng wú shēng
兼示子寧老友 jiàn shì zǐ níng lǎo yǒu
齊皎瀚 qí jiǎo hàn
漸江升天半千崩 jiàn jiāng shēng tiān bàn qiān bēng
蕪生世間作品稱 wú shēng shì jiān zuò pǐn chēng
今日訃告淚雙垂 jīn rì fù gào lèi shuāng chuí
無再攝影千裡鵬 wú zài shè yǐng qiān lǐ péng
知音此世萬有一 zhī yīn cǐ shì wàn yǒu yī
汪公唯實吾心朋 wāng gōng wéi shí wú xīn péng
高士宇宙作行者 gāo shì yǔ zhòu zuò xíng zhě
黃山輸於天堂登 huáng shān shū yú tiān táng dēng
Mourning for the Master Photographic Artist Wang Wusheng
--also sent to old friend Zining (Joseph Chang who introduced us)
Jonathan Chaves
Jianjiang has ascended the skies, Banqian has expired;
In this world, Wusheng’s works have matched those of these men.
But now arrives his obituary -- tears fall in two streams,
No longer flies the 1000-mile Roc of photographic art!
Those who “know our music” in this life?
One out of thousands,
Master Wang indeed has been a bosom friend of mine.
The noble one is still a pilgrim in the universe:
The Yellow Mountains yielding now to the peaks of Heaven.
Astoria, New York
9/22/2018