That a photographic festival should have a theme, is quite normal. Photography is such a vast universe that it is often necessary to create limits, provide a direction to what will be shown in order to give meaning to the featured images. Sticking to the theme is, alas, not so easy, and the hangings frequently beguile any coherence. Not the case, however, for the International Festival of Lianzhou’s 2011 edition in China, not far from home. “Toward the social Landscape”, a diverse subject that was respected.
Some 70 Chinese photographers and a dozen foreigners gathered for the occasion provided a vision of multiple sensitivities, expressed with force and tenderness, different creative approaches to the same topic. Chinese photographers are privileged witnesses to a quickly changing landscape. Wang Peiquan’s composition of works featuring plastic bags scattered in the wind demonstrate how this evolution ignores its effects on the landscapes, man, and the environment. The powerful and direct pictures of Qu Yan, about “clinics” in rural areas, show the failures of the health system and the “authority’s” abandon of the lower classes. Wang Yuwen takes us into the coalmines and the rock excavations whose work conditions are self explanatory. The immense residential skyscrapers being built to the detriment of traditional structures are featured in the nostalgic series by Ni Li Xiang under the title “Lost Temple”. And there are those that are lost, that will never again be found in this maelstrom, like the morbid black and white series by Sun Yanchu. Wang Yuanling, the photographer who received the “New Photography Grand Award “, produced portraits of residents in the neglected neighborhood of Chongquing, a growing city of 30 million people whose historic center was destroyed, its inhabitants displaced to the impoverished shanty town of Shibati. The 7th edition of the Lianzhou Festival demonstrates that change cannot occur without destruction, and that photography is an excellent medium for showing those effects through a maximum of aspects.
Michel Philippot
