This week, we are going to learn from three local masters of photography by looking at their pursuit in creative artistic photography. Today, let's meet with Fou-li TCHAN.
^Life is But a Dream 1996
An Account of Tchan and His Works
Tchan was born in a Guangdong Province in 1916 and graduated from the Guangdong Provincial Second Normal School in 1934. Influenced by his father who loved painting and music, Tchan greatly enjoyed Chinese painting and classical Chinese poetry. His sound knowledge of literature and art provided a solid basis for his launch into photography. In 1944, Tchan immigrated to Vietnam to run a business where his interest in photography blossomed. He acquired sophisticated darkroom techniques of film development, colour temperature and gradation control. In the early years, he was also impressed by the creative ideas and style of Lang Jingshan (1892-1995), a first generation master photographer in China. These resulted in photos which resembled Chinese paintings. The composition is attractive in its expression and emulation of the atmosphere found in Chinese painting. The rich black-and-white gradation reinforces the ambience and similarity to those visual effects found in the Chinese ink painting (scroll down to see the last photo).
^ War and Peace 1951
In 1955, Tchan moved to Hong Kong as a businessman. Shooting as an amateur photographer at the time, his photography was influenced by western realism in the way that he focused on depicting the lives of ordinary people. Although shot in various countries such as Vietnam, all reveal compassion and sympathy for the unfortunate masses. These photographs burst with local colours and the spirit of life. In the early 1960s, Tchan advocated a new approach of "portraying the real object in collaboration with the skill of pictorial depiction" for capturing subjects from everyday life. Portraits from this era truly and most successfully exemplify the marriage of art and real-life subject matter.
^Cheerful Rain 1958
In 1962, he wrote an essay titled "Chinese Pictorial Painting and Landscape Photography" in which he advocated that it was essential to learn from Chinese painting when shooting landscape photographs. Furthermore, he argued that the use of monochromes in black-and-white photos is very similar to the way in which three-dimensional textures and forms are represented with varied ink intensity in Chinese painting. He said that it was only when the colours of objects were simplified and refined that their essences and qualities could be conveyed. As for composition, Tchan thinks that the spaces created in landscape photos can enhance the spatial feeling of solidness and emptiness much like the commensurate types of spaces do in Chinese painting. By shooting spectacular panoramic mountain views with wide-angle lenses and then cropping them to a longitudinal composition, he infused lyricism and poetry into the resulting photographs of these majestic mountains. A sense of depth created by means of multiple perspectives and the spiritual feeling evoked by the use of ink gradation in Chinese painting are thus created.
^Anticipation 1960
In the early 1980s, he was committed to finding a way to lift his ethnic photographic style to a higher level. Promoting a "composite-style of photography and painting", he asked many renowned Chinese painters to adorn his photos with supplementary brushstrokes. In addition to juxtaposing photography with painting, Tchan's photographic style has undergone another significant change since 1980. Influenced by the east-meets-west fusion favoured by Chinese painters of the 20th century, Tchan attempted to merge western painting composition with Chinese pictorial aesthetics.
^ Wrestling 1967
To Tchan, blending eastern and western cultures and creating photographic works with the poetic quality of Chinese painting has been a lifelong aspiration. Tchan is the founder of the Chinese Photographic Association of Hong Kong, a body composed mainly of Chinese members. He has placed significant effort in promoting Chinese poetic photography and has also published photographic magazines like Photoart, Photo Pictorial and China Tourism all of which have effectively popularised photography. He has been instrumental in promoting the development of tourism in China through photography and has creatively pushed local pictorial photography to be ethnically rich. He has made a far-reaching historical impact on Chinese photography and his masterly style has earned great admiration among viewers from the Mainland and overseas alike.
< Misty Mountains
Photography in Tchan's Own Words
I began studying photography in the 1940s. After settling in Hong Kong in the 1950s, my early photographs took a mainly documentary approach. In this way, I was able to express my concern about the lives and fate of the working class. My aspirations and ambitions at that time were to establish an ethnical rich photographic style.
When shooting pictures, we photographers tend to place equal emphasis on composition and the subject's context. I try to avoid putting all my effort into capturing the beauty of a subject so as to no miss the importance of the subject's surroundings. I aim to achieve this by forming visual features through the use of harmonious colours and apparent lines to accentuate the nature of the subjects. My principle of practice is "to portray the real object in collaboration with the skill of pictorial depiction". A mix of realistic and pictorial elements in photographs allows me to strive for the ideal effect of enriching the connotation and beauty of the photo itself.
(Published with photos and information from Hong Kong Heritage Museum; information rearranged)
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