Center Academy of Fine Arts

Co-curator: Yao Lu

The Photography Department of CAFA was built in 2001officially.The teaching principle is emphasized on “professional, diversified and contemporary”, stresses that the photography should be placed in the context of the contemporary visual arts, and make the interpretation subsequently. The Photography Department of CAFA aims at cultivating the most creative image artists, professional photographers, interdisciplinary image and video expert professionals.we focus on the specialty and professional spirit of photography, and meanwhile, we put the emphasis on developing the students’ aesthetic judgment, the originality, the sense of social responsibility and the ability of expanding knowledge scope.so that the graduates will be the most competitive ones in the future. At present, the Photography Department of CAFA has the complete equipment system and teaching space, the teaching methods are becoming more and more advanced and diversified, we pay attention to the combination of art,theory and technology.

”Theory--Thinking--Practice”,the gradual teaching theory is highlighted in our teaching pattern. Under the background of the profound academic accumulation and the accurate and scientific curriculum of the Central Academy of fine arts, the Photography Department of CAFA won the domestic peer recognition and produced so much favorable comment. The students of the Photography Department have won many prizes in international and domestic competitions or exhibitions, the graduates are playing an important influential role in both fine art and commercial applications domains.

Yao Lu

Generally speaking, my works use the form of traditional Chinese painting to express the face of China. China is developing dramatically today and many things in China are under constant construction. Meanwhile many things have disappeared and continue to disappear. The dumps and rubbish covered with the 'shield', the green netting, are a ubiquitous phenomenon in China.

I want the world to be able to make a benign transformation. People must protect the environment. This work implies that the world should become more and more harmonious.

Photography can be understood in traditional ways : It can 'record' many histories long before our own time, and it can take people back to times and situations many years ago. But photography also is very contemporary. It can re-assemble and re-edit the things that we actually see in order to produce illusions that people see when they are in front of such photographic works. In these works, you see images that are true and fictional.

Concerning the style of my works, I believe in maintaining a beautiful feeling in the framing of the image, including composition, line, density and its framing, all the elements regularly contained in painting. I think a good art work is composed of many elements, and it should reflect the knowledge and the skill of the artist. A good art work has intelligence.

The flexibility of photography provides a big expressive space for me, I can work with it in many ways in making my creations.

Gong Zhe

Along with the growth of the age, we have more things to look back. In the memories of the process, I found surprising, some things, some people, or some feelings, are all still to lie quietly in a corner of the depths of memory. When my nerves in a certain scene inadvertently touched at the moment, that sadly silent memories will inadvertently slipped out , lingering around shrouded in my heart. As a photographer, I chose to use the way of taking photo to revert it. I shot the bedroom of around eight good friends, and had a brief interview on their. In our conversation, I found the "secret" of them , this is their memories. Circumstances be allowed to, I by the way of the photo presents their memories. Each thing in the photograph , they are no matter how to move, not discarded, these things even follow them so many years. The memories are beautiful, memory is the light, memory is the light in the heart of the weak light can be done.

Li Yanci

This body of work displaces human activities such as war, construction, migration, and negotiation into outer space. Through reinterpreting human activities in this new space, these images reflect the inherent patterns of civilization development and characteristics of human nature.

Liu Chang

The work “River Bank" was made in 2017. I was on a hiking trip under Huangshan mountain along the Xin 'an River. During this journey, I felt like a vagrant from the North, experiencing the moist and rainy air in the South. In the increasingly convergent same environment, I am trying to find the poetry of the traditional southern misty and watery through the modern build on the River Bank.

Liu Di

The work based its idea on the subtle relationship between a series of opposite concepts, such as the materiality vs. spirituality of nature, principles nature vs. society and obedience vs. violation to the principles of nature.

Accordingly, I magnify the animal’s body, putting then into a city instead of a forest. This contradictory visual impact offers people a stimulus which can evoke thinking and imagination and convey the relationship between nature and human society, between material and spirit, between obedience and violation to the law of nature.

I’ve been seeking for a new objective world that can temporarily distract people from the unimportant and trivial realities, even though it only makes a vague sense beyond the reality in front of our eyes.

Peng Jing

The voice of photos is silence but huge. There are a lot of impressive photos in history, nowadays we are bombed by endless photos all the time but only can remember a few in every year, most of the photos are submerged in the sea of the internet and the sound of photos are dying slowly.