Yann Layma, a photographer of Chinese landscapes since 1985, twenty-five years ago stumbled on a tiny black-and-white photo of the terraced rice fields of Yuanyang County in a magazine and decided to travel to the remote Yunnan province. Back then, the region was still closed off to tourism and little known to the outside world. Intrigued by the rice terraces, Yann Layma obtained a special permission from the Chinese embassy in Paris to study the fields in Yuanyang. His 1993 story, which was published in various magazines and included a vertical photo of the suspended rice fields, was a sensation, since it was the first time that audiences, including the Chinese public, were able to discover the rice terraces captured in living color! Since then, Yuanyang County has become a rallying cry for amateur and professional landscape photographers. The rice terraces were named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013. The following year, the first photo biennale was held in Yuanyang with the goal of promoting and preserving the rice terraces. Among others, the biennale included an exhibition by Yann Layma.
The second biennale took place in 2016, in the month of March—an ideal season to see the rice fields filled with water—and attracted thousands of photographers.
This year’s Yuanyang festival focused on showcasing the region’s photographers: hence the competitions in landscape photography (mainly views of the rice fields at sunrise or sunset) and documentaries about the lives of rice growers, and traditional crafts and costumes of the Yi and Hani peoples. We are highlighting the gold and silver medal winners as well as photo series such as A Year in the Rice Fields, A Marketplace in the Clouds, and The Ancient Way of Pottery, which offer a representative glimpse into the lives of the Yi and Hani minorities inhabiting the region.
Among the featured themes, we loved the series of composite portraits of Lisu and Nujiang peasants, a project undertaken in 2013 by the photographer Zeng Nian who lives in France and China and who documented in detail the construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Zeng Nian revealed that his photography pays homage to Richard Avedon; however, one can also see a reference to David Hockney. We also admired the original project carried out by a group of photographers and researchers from various universities in Tianjin, which is a sort of field study aiming at preserving thousand-year-old villages scattered across China, such as Dachengsuo in Guandong Province photographed by Wang Xiaoyan.
