Street Photography in China

[Ken Tanaka]

This is a wonderful piece, Colin.  I could not stop reading it, and then re-read it (despite being pressed for time).

Thank you so much for taking the time to prepare this piece.  (And thank you, Michael, for presenting it here.)

[Avotius]

Thanks, I am glad you enjoyed it. I am excited to contribute to the site that I have learned so much from. Thanks to Michael for publishing it on the site

Now that its online, im relieved, now I have an excuse to stop tweaking it!


~Colin

[wolfnowl]

Indeed, an interesting look at, to me, a far away land...

Thanks!

Mike.

[Paulo Bizarro]

Very nice reading, and some really interesting photos of daily life.

[Mark D Segal]

Colin,

Thanks for the interesting article and good photographs. It has also been my experience that street photography in China is relatively non-contentious compared with many other places in the world.

I'm going back there this year, to Yunnan Province, starting in Kunming. Do you know that part of the country and would have any particular advice?

Mark

[vandevanterSH]

I was there ~12 years ago and spent three weeks riding three number trains.  The steps of Chongquing are very familiar..they reminded me of the old "Flying Tigers" museum that was there.

Steve

[DarkPenguin]

I haven't actually read it yet but I love the photos.

[dng88]

I haven't actually read it yet but I love the photos.
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I like the photo too. In fact, I thought the picture is so good in black and white and how can he did it using digital camera.  Well, he is not.  Got his same feeling mentioned in the essay when I decide to moved back to film and film development etc. from digital.

[Mark D Segal]

Before you moved back to film for your B&W work, have you experimented with the various techniques for rendering a digital image in B&W - and in particular the Greyscale tools in Camera Raw and the B&W Adjustment Layer in Photoshop? And what did you use for printing those images?

[GerardK]

Colin,

Thanks for throwing me back in time in such a nice way - I spent six weeks in China in 1994 with a friend who speaks Mandarin, and I had much the same experience in and around Guiyang. I did much the same kind of street and rural shooting. At the time we sort of wondered how long this part of China would continue to look and feel like it did, because things seemed to be changing so fast. But from reading you experiences, I gather things actually have changed very little.

When I arrived in Guiyang I thought it was the most horrid place I ever visited, and by the time I left, I was very, very sorry to leave. The laid-back pace of life with which indeed, surprisingly, things do get done, the gentle soft-spoken timeless hospitality of the poorest people I've ever met - they will insist you eat their last chicken - that seems to seemlessly blend with ear-piercing shouting, it was all there. I'd love to go back someday. Thanks for reviving my memories,

Gerard Kingma
www.kingma.nu