BEIJING MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: Beijing Tourist

Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Half a ram on display

Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

"Who Is the Most Dangerous Animal?"
Sign over fun-house mirror
Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

"I too have become Amber!"
(Chinese translation)
Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) William Avedon /All Rights Reserved

"Human Being Exhibition Room" reveals the process of how human beings stem from the animal. So let's enter into the nature museum and find the key to the nature enigma.–China Through a Lens

BEIJING MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
"Opening in the entire year without the resting day"
No. 126 Tianqiao South Street, Beijing

ALESSANDRA MENICONZI: Sacred Stones

EASTERN TIBET - SICHUAN PROVINCE (click enlarge)
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

CHINA - INNER MONGOLIA - GOBI DESERT
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

INDIAN HIMALAYA - ZANSKAR VALLEY
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

EASTERN TIBET - SICHUAN PROVINCE
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

EASTERN TIBET - SICHUAN PROVINCE
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

CHINA - GUIZHOU PROVINGE - HMONG MINORITY
(The Long-horn Miao-a small branch living near Zhijin County)
Copyright (c) Alessandra Meniconzi /All Rights Reserved

"I prefer remote and rugged places, mountainous terrain and desert. I love to find people who can manage to survive in these places, to discover and record their ancient way of life before they are changed by the modern era."

ALESSANDRA MENICONZI is an adventurous Swiss photographer shooting in remote regions of the world. A trip to India at 21 sparked over a decade of exploration of cultures on the ancient trade routes. Her books include Hidden China, Mystic Iceland, The Silk Road, and she is currently working on books about the Tibet, Himalaya, and the Arctic.

Alessandra Meniconzi Gallery
Arctic Trek Greenland I Greenland II Greenland III
Mani Stone Inscriptions
The Long-horned Miao Headress
Canon Interview

JASON FLORIO: Makasutu Mecca In The Forest

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Makasutu, Gambia (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

I have been arrested by the Taliban...ridden into far-flung Afghan valleys in search of nomads with mujahideen as my security, dressed as a woman to cross a border, was at the foot of the Twin Towers as they collapsed, enjoyed the 'comforts' of a Cuban hospital, hunted bats in Surinam, chatted with Somali pirates over Coke and biscuits and danced like a fiend in Beirut nightclubs...among other things.

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JASON FLORIO was born in London and relocated to the USA in 1987. He moved to NYC to pursue photography after seeing Richard Avedon's In The American West exhibition. Jason's Makasutu: Mecca In The Forest Project

Jason Florio Website

DON HONG-OAI: Asian Pictorialism

Winter Fog, Vietnam, 1974
Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved

Hurrying Down Path, Vietnam, 1974
Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved

Spring Morning on River Li, Guilin, 1998 
Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved

Spring Bamboo Boat
Photograph (c) Don Hong-Oai/All rights reserved

DON HONG-OAI was born 1929 in the city of Guangzhou in the Guangdong Province of China. As the youngest of 24 siblings and half-siblings, Don was sent off to live in a Chinese community in Saigon, Vietnam after the death of his parents. At 7 years old he was apprenticed to a Saigon portrait studio where he learned the basics of photography. Don remained an apprentice for a decade, after which he worked a series of odd jobs. Although he was desperately poor, he managed to save US$48 to buy his first camera. In 1950, at the age of 21, he began studying at the Vietnam National Art University.He stayed in Vietnam during the war, but in 1979 a bloody border war broke out between the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the People’s Republic of China. The Vietnamese government instituted a series of repressive policies that targeted ethnic Chinese living in the country. As a result of those policies, Don became one of the millions of “boat people” who fled Vietnam to the U.S. in the late 1970s. At the age of 50, speaking no English and not knowing anyone living in the U.S., Don arrived in San Francisco. He lived within San Francisco's Chinatown where he was able to set up a small darkroom to create his photographs. By selling prints of his photographs at local street fairs, Don was able to make enough money to return to China periodically to shoot photographs. He was also able to study with Master Long Chin-San in Taiwan.

Long Chin-San, who died in 1995 at the age of 104, had developed a style of photography based on the long tradition of landscape imagery in Chinese art. For centuries Chinese artists had been creating dramatic monochromatic landscapes using simple brushes and ink. These paintings weren’t intended to accurately depict nature, but to interpret nature’s emotional impact. Don’s new work modeled on the ancient style combined (pre-digital photo compositing) the traditional motifs of Chinese paintings, such as mountains, birds, tree's and boats, using more than one negative to create the delicate beauty in each landscape. Realism was not the goal.

Don's work began to draw critical attention in the 1990s. He no longer had to sell his photography at street fairs; he was now represented by an agent and his work was being sold in galleries throughout the U.S., in Europe and in Asia. His work was sought after by private art collectors, corporate buyers and museums. Don passed away in San Francisco in 2004. More bio here.

Rare original sepia toned gelatin-silver prints made by Don Hong-Oai with his hand-written calligraphy titles and red chop signatures, contact Anne Kelly: Photo-Eye Gallery

CHINA CONTEMPORARY ARTIST: Yang Jinsong

A Gutted Fish Painting, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China 
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Yang Jinsong Painting in his Studio, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China

Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

YANG JINSONG, a leading Chinese painter from the Chong Qing municipality, in his studio in the Fei Jia Cun Artist Village in Beijing, China. Yang explains his 'consumerist-critical' paintings depicting fish, traditionally a symbol of wealth in Chinese culture, critique China’s construction boom and over-development by depicting bulldozers infesting the fish’s gutted innards. Yang often paints himself with his wife, She Cai, surrounded by emblems such as pollution, electrical appliances, and cigarette butts (2nd image, center painting), symbolizing China’s rapid development and embrace of consumerism.

The Fei Jia Cun Artist Village is one of several art communities surrounding Beijing where leading painters, sculptors and photographers from across China work and exhibit. These art villages represent the forefront of China’s Abstract, Pop, and Neo-Realist artists. – by William Avedon

Yang Jinsong Website

CHINA CONTEMPORARY ARTIST: Wang Xing

Wang Xing, Dragon Sculpture, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Wang Xing, Dragon Sculpture, Fei Jia Cun, Beijing, China
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Photographs (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Mythical Creature by artist Wang Xing
Photograph (c) William Avedon/All rights reserved

Chinese sculptor WANG XING is from China’s He Bei province. Above, Wang Xing was creating a series of nine dragon sculptures for an exhibition in Beijing. Wang’s clay and bronze sculptures are a mixture of Buddhist art, Japanese lacquer, and ancient mythical texts depicting half-human half-animal creatures. He is fascinated by the concept of dragons in Chinese culture as they were traditionally symbolic of the Emperor.

Wang’s studio is in the Fei Jia Cun Artist Village on the outskirts of Beijing, China. Fei Jia Cun is one of at least 10 artist communities surrounding Beijing where painters, sculptors and photographers from across China have come to work and exhibit. These art villages represent the forefront of China’s Abstract, Pop, and Neo-Realist artists. –William Avedon

More China Contemporary Artists:

Yang Jinsong

Yang Li Ming

FERIT KUYAS: City of Ambition

Security Officer, Office Building, Chongqing, China 2005
Photograph (c) Ferit Kuyas/All rights reserved
Click images to enlarge

Restaurant Boats, Changjiang River, Chongqing, China 2005
Photograph (c) Ferit Kuyas/All rights reserved

Construction Site, Changjiang Nr. 1 Road, Chongqing, China 2005

Photograph (c) Ferit Kuyas/All rights reserved

Jialing River, Huanghuayuan Bridge, Chongqing, China 2005
Photograph (c) Ferit Kuyas/All rights reserved

FERIT KUYAS was born in Istanbul, Turkey. His career in photography followed his studies in architecture and law in Zurich, Switzerland. His most recent project CITY OF AMBITION: FAST FORWARD IN CHINA is a personal view of Chongqing, one of the largest cities in the world. Located in Southwest China in the Sichuan region, it was the capitol of China during World War II, now populated by almost 32 million people.

Kuyas has captured these images with a view camera on 4x5"color film. His book “City of Ambition” will be published in October 2009 (German Edition, Benteli Publishers) and spring 2010 (English Edition, Mets & Schilt Publishers). His work is available through the Stephen Cohen Gallery in Los Angeles and Galerie Monika Wertheimer in Oberwil, Switzerland. He was one of 100 photographers invited to participate in Review Santa Fe 2009. Ferit Kuyas website

TRAVEL: Global Pandemic

Photograph by Anonymous
Air China Flight Arriving from JFK, Beijing Capital Airport, June 9, 2009

Still reeling from the 2003 SARS outbreak, Chinese health officials (above) from the Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau in full protective clothing check passengers' temperature, passports and health declaration forms before allowing passengers to leave the plane.

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BEIJING: After flying 12 hours from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport to Beijing Capital Airport on an Air China Flight, passengers were required to remain seated in the plane for an additional hour to be individually checked for high temperature by Chinese health officials of the Beijing Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau in order to ensure none showed signs of the H1N1 virus. Before being allowed to leave the plane each passenger was also questioned on the state of their health and then given health declaration forms to fill out. Cards declaring they are free of symptoms were given to hold onto their person for a period of two weeks to establish their good health.

HEUNGMAN: Shanghai, City of Shadows

Photograph (c) Heungman/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Heungman/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Heungman/All rights reserved

Photograph (c) Heungman/All rights reserved

HEUNGMAN was born in China, brought up in Hong Kong and lives in New York City. He received a BA in Cinema and Television Arts from California State University and BFA in Photography from the Art Center College of Design in L.A.. He was a successful commercial photographer for many of the 15 years he lived in New York City. His work was published in Rolling Stone, Spin, and Paper Magazines. He shot numerous musicians; Usher, Moby, Lil' Kim, Ben Harper, The Black Crowes, Duran Duran and celebrities Hugh Grant and Conan O'Brien, as well as many advertising campaigns such as Tommy Hilfiger.

Missing his "roots", Heungman returned to Shanghai for several years, documenting the city around him. He applied his early love of American film noir in his series "The New Noir". He's exhibited this work in galleries from Austria, China to New York City.

"Shanghai is the natural capital of international neomodernism because, without obvious parallel, it is an interrupted city. Not only is it undergoing a self-conscious process of rebirth, it is doing so with explicit reference to its previous age of cosmopolitan flourishing. It is doubling back upon itself, across a hiatus. In its restoration structures, which typically wrap or encase the old brick and metal skeleton of the early 20th century in the glass, light and digital electronics of fashionable art spaces, leisure venues and creative industries, Shanghai's 1930s and 1990s incarnations click seamlessly together, as if assembling the precision-engineered pieces of a cryptic historical jigsaw puzzle...the still photography of Heungman's Shanghai Noir series engages in a stubborn exploration of broken neomodern duration. At its most elementary, it exploits high-contrast (chiaroscuro) black-and-white imagery and noir aesthetics as a time-code, translating the city's futuristic highrises edifices back into the historical period implied by its style of perception. More subtly, the aspects of Americana (replete with both Gothamite and Hollywood references) disorient and cosmopolitanize, entangling the city's local storyline in wider and more incomprehensible structures of trans-regional fatality. The city's harsh – even infernal – incandescence is cast adrift within an oceanic vastness of pitiless, world-swallowing night. The heavens are an absolute nothingness (so everything is permitted)." Read the complete piece by NICK LAND

HEUNGMAN: WEBSITE
New York: INES DESEROUX GALLERY
Shanghai: ART LABOR GALLERY