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Review on Zhao Pengcheng’s Photography Portfolio “Back Views”

Junnan Liao

COMM 663-Media Critics

Background:

As the member of China Photographers Association, Zhao Pengcheng has been engaged in photography for almost 30 years. He published the photography portfolio “Back Views”, where with the sharp eyes of a photographer he narrated the life stories of people’s striving for survival by the camera lens from the viewpoint of common people. The paper analyzes technical and artistic features reflected in this portfolio from the angle of an amateur photographer.  

Both domestic and foreign photographers like to express characters through their back views. Being novel, refined, plain and implicit, this technique of expression can arouse readers’ imagination and obtain thought-provoking effect. Yet, in Zhao Pengcheng’s “Back Views”, all 142 photos have the same topic, which is probably peerless in the history of photography. Evidently, the author makes it on purpose but not on a sudden impulse. He has deep reflection, firm conviction and persistent pursuit in the portfolio, which can be considered as a kind of traditional thinking model, viewing angle, special inspiration, value orientation, technique of expression and innovative exploration. Following its “alternative” behavior and tracing back to his creation concepts, I can thoroughly study his unique and innovative views as well as extraordinary and ideological root, which is really interesting for discussion.

Features of Content in “Back Views”

—All works are back views. Why does the author want to take the photo of people’s back views? It is because in his opinion, “back view is an eternal theme of documentary photography, possessing rich ideological connotation and strong infection”; “back view is the true reflection of people’s life, and has infinite materials for creation”; “the creation of back view not only reveals human’s simplicity, humor and sincerity, but also records the harmonious and contradictory relationship between human and nature, human and society and among human, and the transition of human and society”. He gives a rational, profound and wise answer from the aspects of photography creation’s eternal theme, material source, and content significance and value.

—All works are about common people’s life. The characters in his lens are all common people of social basic level. With the sharp eyes of a photographer and from the viewpoint of common people, he tells the stories about their arduous struggle for survival. It mirrors his civic consciousness, human-orientated position and close attention to people’s sufferings.

—All works are shot in black and white. He doesn’t adopt color but just uses white and black, sticking to the function of expression of black and white film. From his perspective, black and white film is plain and profound with strong sense of history; black, white and grey have close chromatograph and ample gradations, which is easy to create a sharp contrast; the keynote suitable to build deep and imposing style can help express author’s feelings of life.

Most probably, the author discovers “the truest and simplest part of human” from people’s back views. He regards it as “the most meaningful thing of human”, and “the most valuable thing of society”. Thus, he decides to specially shoot people’s back views, and express various aspects of life from a particular angle. I think his discovery should be credited to his “great efforts in observation and reflection”, just as the philosophers cracking their brains to make fantastic behaviors so as to explore human’s nature. 

Techniques of Expression of “Back Views”

There are mainly three common techniques of expression of “Back Views”.

The first one is to intentionally hide people’s facial expression and try to capture characteristic posture of back views, in an attempt to arouse readers’ imagination and achieve author’s purpose of creation. For example, the photo taken in Kuitun in 2001 recorded four women who were reading advertisements. The billboard is pasted with advertisements about recruitment and house for rent. Judging from their dress and normal shape of back views, we can imagine that they are laid-off workers and feel their anxiety to look for information about re-employment. It truly and rustically records the social situation.

The second one is to set off characters’ background under a certain symbolic environment, to imply characters’ emotion and purpose of behavior. For instance, the photo taken in Dushanzi in 1993 was about workers’ queuing for dinner. The background of the photo is a group of workers who are lining up for dinner in front of the work shed. The line is long and crowd. Two workers simply put their bowls behind and stand helplessly. The environment vividly and deeply displays the living condition of those workers at that time.

The third one is to apply the expression of positive character related with background character to serve as a foil to the expression of background character. For example, the photo taken in Qixian in 2004 was a person riding a bike to sell calabash. The cyclist ties rows of calabashes on the crossbar and then puts it behind the bike. Swaggering through the streets, he was looked at askance by passers-by. Surprised at it, two youngsters walking towards him laughed. It is imaginable that the cyclist must be self-satisfied for his own original idea.  

Three Principles of “Back Views”

In order to make the photos authentic, the author sets three principles for himself: “I don’t pursue a magnificent topic intentionally but record the life of common people, don’t pursue perfection of image intentionally but take photo of the real and nature scenes, don’t modify the image intentionally but maintain the natural beauty.” These sincere words indicate that Zhao Chengpeng’s creation aims at showing people authenticity of daily life, vividness of sites and the natural status of social life. The purpose of not pursuing something intentionally is to ensure the photos’ authenticity and get rid of modification, exaggeration, affectation and cheat. With regard to “Back Views”, Zhao Chengpeng has his own understandings. He knows it is an “indirect” and “implicit” expression method and incapable of reflecting the vigorous life directly and magnificently, but he believes that “back views” will “make people reflect and imagine”. It is obvious that Zhao Chengpeng has made an exhaustive consideration of the theory and practice as well as advantages and limitations of “back views” because he is a scrupulous photographer with conscious and definite thinking.

Thinking Characteristics of “Back Views”

The creation thinking of “Back Views” is characterized with three features.

Firstly, Zhao Pengcheng believes that “Back Views” can convey real emotions. As it is described in the materialism, everything in the world has two aspects, like yin and yang, positive and negative, front and back, and people can express the real attribute of things from both the two sides. In the large and ever-changing world, everyone acts various roles throughout his or her life that is saturated with happiness, anger and sadness, all of which are reflected in not only their faces but also their back views. When people show and express themselves, most of the people focus their attention to modify and beautify their facial expressions, gestures and languages, but lose sight of their back views, leaving them the original status. Therefore, back views demonstrate to people the “original reality and humor of life.” Such an understanding is full of philosophies and speculative ideas as well as characterized with exploration of people’s worldly wisdom; thus, recording people’s back views is a vivid and innovative method in photography.

Secondly, he deems taking photo of back views as a creative measure. With regard to photography, Zhao Chengpeng neither steps into the shoes of other photographers or himself nor goes with the stream, trying new things continuously in hopes of creating a brand new area of himself. As time goes by, he has accumulated a wealth of experience that gave him a new understanding of the “Back Views” he is enamored with. As far as he is concerned, this is a field photographers can explore in a greater depth so that he applied himself to it and finally formed his own style.

Thirdly, he insists that taking photo of back views is an exploration into artistic expression method. Although all the photos Zhao Pengcheng takes are back views, they are distinguished from each other due to the differences of gender, age, status, nationality, thought, personality, body, gesture, deed, environment, etc; thus it is impossible to take the same photos. In addition, by finding different backgrounds, adjusting focal length, angle, aperture, shutter, chiaroscuro, light direction and employing different rhetorical devices, we can achieve various vivid photos of back views. Furthermore, the property of arousing viewers’ imagination will perfect our photos to a large extent. Most importantly, people’s back views are infinite materials from which we can borrow inspiration ceaselessly.

After finishing Zhao Pengcheng’s “Back Views”, I realize that the expression methods of photography came out from life yet beyond life. In my view, this is the origination of value of good photography works.