On Curating Chinese Photography, and World Press Photo
Issue #22: a conversation with curator He Yining on her curatorial career and experience as a jury member of WPP Asian region
Hi,
It’s Yan. Curating is not just about displaying work in a physical space. It is about building relations between diverse artists’ works, between various forms and spaces, between curators and artists and, ultimately, between the artwork and the audience. This is what I learned in a conversation with curator, researcher and writer He Yining. She was in Amsterdam in May for the World Press Photo award ceremony, and I had the chance to catch up with her.
Yining is one of the most prolific curators and bilingual writers on photography in China. In our conversation, she shares insights into her curatorial process using several projects she's recently worked on, including two exhibitions in China and the Netherlands that challenge stereotypes of one another.
We also discuss her experience as a jury member in this year’s World Press Photo (WPP) awards. As a photojournalism award founded in the Netherlands more than 60 years ago, WPP has been trying to adapt to the rapid changes in the industry. In 2021, it set up the Open Format category to accommodate projects that use a mixture of “image-based” formats, and started regional awards to tackle the issue of diversity and representation in the photojournalism industry. While the division of the regions, in my own opinion, is a bit arbitrary (Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia are one region, and the rest of Asia is another), these awards do recognize regionally significant stories that do not fall into usual award-winning “global” topics such as war and conflict. One example is this amazing long-term project on water in Central Asia that we both really like.
While these are welcome improvements, Yining reminds us that the WPP is, ultimately, a European institution within an industry dominated by media organizations from the Global North. No awards are neutral, and award-winning photos are just as much shaped by questions of ideology and legacy as they are by ideas of quality.
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Yan: Your curatorial work revolves around two main aspects – curating Chinese photographers’ work for international audiences and introducing the work of foreign photographers to China. Tell us more about this process.
Yining: One of the exhibitions I recently curated, together with Dutch artist Ruben Lundgren, is called “China Imagined.” It debuted at the Breda Photography Festival in the Netherlands in 2020. Subsequently, in China, we organized a series of exhibitions titled "NL Imagined." These exhibitions were designed to promote dialogue and understanding between the two countries through the medium of photography. One common curatorial thread is that the work should break people’s stereotypes of the other country. Fortunately, the complexity and the richness of these works speak for themselves so our intention is not that in-your-face. We want to spark curiosity, and let the audience enter into a country and a society through these works.
The challenge of curating Chinese photography in the Netherlands versus curating Dutch photography in China is quite different. In China, it’s common to see exhibitions showcasing the work of foreign artists presented through the lens of art and creativity in the medium, and rarely through politics and ideology. However, when curating exhibitions about China in Western countries, there is often a challenge as the works tend to be interpreted and filtered through the lens of ideology and politics.
Yan: How do you decide on the exhibition theme and which photographers’ work to include? What comes first?
Yining: It’s contingent on many factors. Sometimes a theme is proposed by the institution that assigns me the task to curate an exhibition. Sometimes it is driven by my research interests, and during this process, I would get into collaboration with different organizations, for example, the Art Council of Switzerland, the Culture Department of the Dutch Embassy, or various Chinese institutions. It can go either way: either I have a theme first, and then commission artists to create work or find existing work that fits the theme, or I am interested in a few photographers’ work and curate an exhibition to showcase the works with a coherent theme.
The project I created with the China Port Museum took on quite an interesting approach, different from a traditional curatorial process. Since 2016, every two to three years, we have selected six to seven photographers and artists to explore concepts related to ports. We explored the development and evolution of Chinese port cities in our first project. It was quite an open-ended theme and we presented the commissioned work in the format of a publication and an exhibition.
In the second project, we built upon the previous project and delved into more introspective aspects, and examined how changes in port cities impact the culture and people of the region. The third edition, carried out in 2022, revolves around the history of these ports and its connection to the collapse of China as a semi-colony and feudal society. We can see how the developments of infrastructure, such as shipping and railroads, have changed the history of these port cities. So in this case we established the theme first, and then invited photographers to participate, presenting their works through a more academic and research-oriented approach.
Yan: You participated in the judging for the Asian region at World Press Photo (WPP) this year. What was it like? What was the judging process?
Yining: The Asian region was the first in-person judging since the pandemic (while all other regional judging took place online). All five jury members were flown to Dhaka for a seven-day intensive judging process. The jury selected are people from Asia, with knowledge of Asia. The work selected by us then made the pool of work for further consideration by the global jury, which went on to decide the winners of the Asia region as well as the global winners. (Far & Near Note: You can read more about WPP’s jury process this year here).
Yan: Part of the purpose of WPP’s restructuring of the global awards was to allow photographers from different regions, especially those outside of Europe and North America, to have the opportunity to participate and even win. But when we were at the award ceremony in Amsterdam in May, we saw that many of the winning works, for example from the African region, still came from European and American photographers. Do you think setting up regional awards has achieved its stated goal?
Yining: I personally feel that it has encouraged local photographers to participate to a certain extent. Our judging criteria — I can only say that for the Asian region — still rests on the quality of the work itself and the richness of the visual language, how a photographer represents and documents a certain issue or event. In other words, our judging criteria focuses on the work itself. In Western Europe and North America, photographers often undergo extensive professional training. Another noticeable fact is that many awardees come from big photography agencies. I’m not surprised that those people won the awards.
Of all the submissions, we can see some works carry obviously the perspectives of Western photographers, and we can also see that there are many local voices, and you can see their efforts in those works, even if they are not totally up to professional standards.
Yan: When the Photo of the Year award was announced at the ceremony, the jury emphasized that they thought it had to be a photo about Ukraine this year. So it’s partly about choosing the best photo, and partly about making a statement. Aside from acknowledging outstanding photographers from the previous year, what other significant role does this award fulfill?
Yining: We must know that WPP is fundamentally a Western award, carrying with it a particular ideology. By setting up the award, WPP sets up the rules of the game and reinforces a Eurocentric way of seeing. Despite efforts to select juries from various regions, including a global jury in the last round representing diverse backgrounds, we ourselves cannot change the ideology WPP carries - one that has shaped the award's legacy for the last 60 years. But I think it is still a positive attempt to listen to local voices and provide a platform for photographers from non-Western regions or marginalized areas to have their voices heard.
Yan: From the perspective of a curator and drawing from your experience over the past decade, what kind of changes or transformations have you observed in the Chinese photography scene?
Yining: Artists have been evolving. A lot of artists I’m close with have successfully transformed their practices. Many photographers are not only working in photography but also branching out into the realm of contemporary art without the restriction of the photo medium. Some went from image making to video and film, some even are working with installations and sculptures. I think when artists with a photography background work with other mediums, their photographic language and thinking still play an important role and are very helpful in their creative process.
Secondly, the infrastructural network for photography, such as photo festivals and awards in China, has experienced ups and downs. Some previously prominent festivals and awards that discover and recognize new talents, such as Lianzhou Photo Festival and the Three Shadows Photography Award, are no longer running. But we also see new awards emerging. It is crucial for us to constantly embrace and adapt to these changes. (Far & Near Note: This week, news came out that the Lianzhou festival would reopen this year under the direction of the local government, without the professional curatorial team that made the festival one of its kind. This article from early this year explains how the pandemic and increasing censorship led to the demise of Lianzhou.)
Yan: Do you have any advice for people who are interested in curating?
Yining: My first advice is to work closely with artists. Curating is a very practical job. It’s hard to learn how to do it from books. You have to find your curatorial approach through continuous exploration. The most important task in curating an art exhibition is to work with artists, listen to their voices, and discover their interests from the process of interaction with them. Personally, as a curator, I grow with photographers, so I pay a lot of attention to their journeys, personal experiences, and the values their works stand for. What I have been doing is helping young photographers to amplify their voices through exhibitions. On the other hand, their work also helps me to organize some very fragmented ideas and to produce theories based on their creative approaches. As curator, I’m not trying to establish my authority through their works but rather create conditions where we mutually support each other and grow together.
The era of strong curatorship, meaning having one curator lead a very big project, is gradually fading. So teamwork has become critical. Find like-minded friends to work together to accomplish things, be it collaborating with artists, designers or scholars. This is a model that I believe will be very important in curating over the next decade or two.
Yining He is a curator and researcher in visual arts based in the United Kingdom and China. She has curated more than 40 cross-cultural exhibitions for museums, art institutions, and photography festivals across Eurasia, many of which have gained international reputation. She won the OCAT Institute's inaugural Research-based Curatorial Project for her research Picturing Histories: Historical Narratives in Contemporary Chinese Photography and was nominated for the 14th AAC Art China Curator of the Year Award for this research project exhibition The Abode of Anamnesis.
Yining is a graduate of the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. She is currently a Ph.D. researcher at the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts, Faculty of Arts, Design, and Media at Birmingham City University.
Who we are:
Ye Charlotte Ming is a journalist and visual editor covering stories about culture, history, and identity, and her hometown’s German colonial past.
Beimeng Fu is a video journalist based in Shanghai. She is a lover of languages and documentaries.
Yan Cong is formerly a photojournalist currently pursuing a research MA in new media and digital culture in Amsterdam.
Interviewer: Yan Cong; Translator/Editor: Ye Charlotte Ming, Beimeng Fu; Copy editor: Krish Raghav
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