How to Take Authentic Photos of Life in China
From developing film in the shower in the 80s, to assisting in one of China’s earliest TV documentaries, a judge from our “Most China” photo contest reflects on what humanistic photography means to him
TRANSLATED BY ANA PADILLA FORNIELES
PHOTOGRAPHY BY HUANG RUIDE
As TWOC’s “Most China” photo contest approaches its deadline, we’re inviting photographers and photojournalists on our judging panel to share their stories, the inspiration behind their work, and any advice they have for readers who want to start shooting. Today we hear from Huang Ruide, a Guangdong-based folk culture photographer who was part of a wave of student photography enthusiasts in the 1980s, and learned on the job as an assistant on in one of China’s earliest TV documentary projects.
There is still time to submit to the contest! Please read the submission guidelines and send your work to [email protected] by August 31, 2022, for a chance to win prizes and see your work in print.
I was part of the third class of college students in China to go to university after the college entrance exams (gaokao) were resumed in 1977. My classmates came from all over the
country, and we were liberal arts majors with lively spirits. A lot of
us discovered in our third year that we were interested in photography,
and a few kids from well-off families had cameras, so we formed a loose
alliance around this interest.
My
classmates from Baoding found a few rolls of film, while some students
from Shantou bought a few leftover reams of photographic paper. The
handier students among us built some printing machines out of old wooden
boxes. Everyone raised funds to buy consumables such as developing and
correction fluid; occasionally we also borrowed them from the Youth League Committee. When my course load permitted, I ventured out on
the weekends to take pictures. At night, I used a quilt to seal off the
shower stalls down the corridor and turn the space into a darkroom.
For
the next two years, until my graduation, I practiced the whole gamut of
technical processes in film photography; as for my aesthetic sense, I
relied on my own liberal arts education. These were, in fact, the
origins of my exposure to photography. Though I had no achievements to
boast about, I did immerse myself deep in the medium in the hopes that
something would stick.
Huang (right) with his classmate at the Zhenjiang Tower in 1982. That year, the film ”Shaolin Temple” was released, and many young men went to Zhenjiang Tower to act out the scenes (He Huifei)
Upon graduation, I
was assigned my first job. It was in a water conservation unit for the
Pearl River. At that time, the whole country was avidly watching the
1983 CCTV documentary series Story of the Yangtze River (《话说长江》),
which documented the scenery and the lives of ordinary people around the Yangtze Basin in the early years of reform. I was certainly no exception; I now wonder whether the series
stirred in me a certain restlessness.
Guangdong TV decided to jump on
the bandwagon and shoot their own series of documentaries on the Pearl
River Delta in cooperation with my work unit, so I ended up assisting in
the filming. Now, if a work unit agreed to cooperate with the project,
they’d of course want to send one of their own people along for the
ride. That person was me.
My work unit provided me with a full set of
photographic equipment and a convenient expense account, and I was
tasked with following the TV presenter, ready to start shooting at his
signal. As I stood behind him and copied what he did, I gradually came
to understand what an exquisitely challenging medium filming was. Prior
to shooting, the presenter always did some preliminary, in-depth desk
work. Wherever we went, he knew where and what to shoot, as well as any
unconventional angles we could attempt, beyond the usual takes.
For
instance, when we had to shoot the Lijiang River, he decided to climb
to the top of the highest surrounding mountain. However, at the time
there was no clear hiking path, nor did we have any climbing equipment
to assist us. The presenter stepped on a protruding rock at the top of
the mountain with a camera weighing a few dozen pounds on his shoulders,
when the rock suddenly began to shake, and his body started shaking with it.
There was a sheer drop under the rock; he was just like an illustration
of flying apsaras of Buddhist mythology. I was crouching behind
him as usual, and reflexively I stretched out my hand in an attempt to
help, and began to lose my own balance. We almost both became Buddhist
spirits that day.
In the end, we made it
down the mountain without incident, and bounced back up to rush and
shoot Elephant Trunk Hill, laughing heartily as the initial shock
subsided. As we stood at the shore at dusk, the presenter decided he was
not satisfied with our angle, so we jumped into the Lijiang River. We
emerged from the cold water with our noses and lips blue, and our bodies
pale.
Huang out shooting on an assignment (Wang Yiqin)
Plunging from one thrilling adventure to the
next, the presenter was actually exploring a unique perspective on life,
looking for extraordinary shooting angles that were out of reach for
ordinary people. It was a good approach that inspired me to keep two
factors in mind when picking up my camera—first I decided on the
subject, and second, the shooting angle. Of course, I am not condoning
reckless exploration. There is more to life than just photography and
videography.
In the course of this job
assignment, I traveled to Hainan on a business trip and heard from the
locals that the house of Nan Batian, the feudal despot in Xie Jin’s
feature film The Red Detachment of Women,
still stood in Lingshui county. Years later, now in my capacity as a
reporter for a renowned magazine, I made a special trip to Nan Batian’s
former residence for an interview. A round of extensive, in-depth
investigations proved that the facts differed greatly from the rumors.
In 1961, Xie Jin settled on the old manor of Zhang Hongyou (张鸿猷), a rather
benevolent local landowner and educator, as the location of fictional character Nan
Batian’s manor. The Red Detachment of Women was released a year later to the great pride of the locals.
Soon, however, fiction took over reality and
Zhang Hongyou’s noble memory was replaced—and tarnished—by that of the
infamous Nan Batian. If you weren’t really a despot, why would the film
crew choose your house for the movie? So the masses reasoned. An enraged
mob vowed to expose to the public the tunnel through which the villain
had fled in the movie, so all the floor tiles and even some walls of the
Zhang manor were dug up. Of course, they couldn’t find what didn’t
exist, so the furious masses drove Zhang’s descendants away from their home
and into a storm of misfortune—they were criticized in struggle
sessions, restricted in their employment opportunities, and even banned
from joining the Party.
Huang’s photo series “Acts of Faith” was published by TWOC in 2020, in which he photographed various folk rituals in China over a period of 10 years (TWOC)
From Huang’s “Acts of Faith“ series: To commemorate a general who once saved their village, Xilin residents carry his statue through fire every year (Huang Ruide)
From Huang’s “Most China” series: (Huang Ruide): Villagers in parts of southern China carry their gods through a series of bonfires as a Lantern Festival tradition (Huang Ruide)
The story sounded almost too extraordinary to
be true; as a Chinese saying goes, “seeing is believing,” so perhaps
that’s why the masses were unswayed by Zhang’s words. Fortunately, I was
able to gather visual proof of the facts with my camera, taking
photographs of the Zhang clan and their family home. Once my work was
published, it elicited a strong response from readers and other
journalists. The Zhang family was also able to use this opportunity to
plead their case with the county authorities and eventually rehabilitate
their name.
This incident helped me
realize that “pictures”—in any medium—play an auxiliary yet important
role alongside words. The experience as a whole also highlighted to me
the significance of humanistic photography. Mountains may remain
unchanged for thousands of years, but human life is full of ups and
downs. If you want to understand more about society and life, bring a
camera!
Huang’s photo series “Close to Heaven” was published by TWOC in 2021, documenting the burial customs of the Bo people in southwestern China
An artisan of the Dong ethnic group crafting a reed sheng, a traditional wind instrument among many ethnic groups in southwestern China (Huang Ruide)
From Huang’s “Acts of Faith“ series: In Shafang village, deities are bathed on the “Buddha Washing Festival” in the sixth lunar month (Huang Ruide)
I began to study the classic works of humanistic photography, both in China and abroad. The first photo album I ever bought, The Photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson,
was published in 1988. However, I ended up going on a decade-long
hiatus from photography due to various unexpected reasons. Then one day a
new friend came across a few photos I’d snapped with a point-and-shoot
camera and asked me if I was a photography enthusiast. I denied this,
only for my friend to turn around and send me a Nikon D90 camera. The
gift came with the following words: “Wouldn’t it be a waste of your
talent if you were to abandon photography?”
This
made me feel ashamed. I could only play catch-up hurriedly, and thus I
fell into a photography frenzy. In order to regain my skills and
simultaneously update my knowledge, I carried my camera with me and
plunged into my “subjects” every day after clocking out of my job, on
weekends, and holidays. I once again devoted myself to humanistic
photography, with a particular focus on folk customs and traditional
skills in rural areas. Digital photography has granted hobbyists a
low-cost way to snap indiscriminately. At the height of my craze, I
would take over 10,000 photos a week, relying on repetition to gradually
hone my skills. This went on until someone told me one day: “You’ve
become one with your machine.” Another decade had flashed by at that
point.
Villagers in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong province celebrate the birth of grandsons within the last year by showering peanuts from their rooftops during the Lantern Festival (Huang Ruide)
In the past 10 years, I’ve had a wealth of
interesting experiences that only made me fall deeper in love with
humanistic photography. If you ask me if I’ve learned anything about
photography, the answer is of course yes; but whether it’s of any value
to the reader is up to them to decide:
Authenticity is the essence of humanistic photography. It is the record of reality and of history. Therefore, falsification is strictly forbidden. Should you, at the start of your journey into photography, have been misled by some teachers into taking posed or falsified photos, then you should regard the works you produced as a purely technical exercise. Once you start creating images independently, you should return immediately to authenticity. It doesn’t matter whether you need to shoot one, 10, or several hundred times; you’ll eventually get it right. Strive to find unusual themes and unconventional angles, if you want your works to have an impact on the viewer, rather than follow the crowd. A curious nature is a must for good photography. Even if you are setting foot in a well-trodden area, try to find unique angles that will make your viewpoint stand out. Do your utmost to capture the emotions and demeanor of your subjects at a particular moment. At the end of the day, human beings are animals with thoughts and emotions—sometimes hidden in the heart, sometimes overflowing on the surface. Showing people’s spirit and emotions is what makes them come alive as real humans with thoughts and feelings. The value of photography lies in “culture,” and this is not a value that is narrowly defined. Our understanding of culture will only grow wider as we observe our societies, read books, contemplate the classics, and engage with what we see and hear from a cultural perspective. Faced with a scene to shoot, you should quickly ascertain what’s culturally valuable and how to incorporate it into your work. If you plan your shoots this way, your work will immediately stand out among the rest. Photography is a never-ending progress: shoot and repeat. To improve, you need constant practice and pursuit. While you practice, you must not be afraid to think. You must not always confine your expression to a single image, but organize your thought process in terms of series of images, and strive to make each shot better than the last.
Cover image: Villagers gathering to watch a public performance in the Chaoshan region of Guangdong, a traditional part of China where seniority matters when it comes to seating arrangements in crowds (Huang Ruide)
Huang
Ruide is a Guangzhou-based photographer who is a long-term collaborator
with TWOC. He is also the inspiration and one of the judges behind TWOC’s “Most China” photo contest, which is accepting submissions until August 31, 2022.
Enter your photos of China for a chance to obtain feedback from our
professional judging panel, plus cash prizes and opportunities to see
your work in print!
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