The Museum of Photography in Lianzhou (China) opens its doors tomorrow, Saturday, December the 2nd. This is the first museum dedicated to photography in the People’s Republic of China. Twelve years ago, the city had already seen the creation of the first Chinese photography festival, the Lianzhou Foto Festival, which has since gain an international attention..
The museum opens with four exhibitions: Zhuang Zhi presents his series A Shadow Place, Zhang Hai’er shows him Bad Girls, while Albert Watson sees his work The Two Face of Janus exhibited. Baptiste Rabichon finishes the program with the exhibition There Should Have Been Roses.
The French commissioner and former director of the museum Nicéphore Niepce, François Cheval, will lead the Chinese museum along with Lianzhou Foto Festival founder and co-director, Duan Yuting. Both said they wanted to think the museum program as a dialogue with the festival. ‘Educating people about photography is not a vain claim to make when Chinese modernity has absolutely taken on board the need for including and understanding the nature of the mechanical image. Nevertheless, we – the project initiators – are aware of the ambiguity of this “art” and the museum is intended as an alternative to overheated consumption and shallowness. The architecture of the place depicts a fusion between modernity and tradition. The “team set” to run the museum is an example of dialogue itself. The collection and programming will be based on a permanent attempt to share, to exchange’, declared François Cheval.
