Dunhuang line

The life photography class is a professional course of the photography school. Unlike the general classroom learning, it requires us to go deep into life to observe life and express life. Therefore, we should go out of the college, go out of Beijing, and discover, understand, and feel in the life we ​​are not familiar with.

Since the opening of the "Life Photography Class" of the School of Photography in 1999, combined with the national strategy of developing the northwest, it has also developed a systematic five-year teaching plan. Paying attention to the northwest, paying attention to their development, recording their development footprint, cultivating students' consciously finding the ideal and the reality of the society, combining with the country's development and construction, combining their future destiny with the country's future and destiny. Witnesses and witnesses of the era. As a person who studies photography, we should make our own contribution in this great development, and record the development of an era by means of photography. Only when we enter the northwest can we truly understand the unexpected situations there.

This year is the third year of our hospital's northwest trip. On the eve of the school, we embarked on a train to the Hexi Corridor, and the life photography class began. After entering Gansu, what you saw on the train was the Gobi Desert. How are these cities different from the familiar Beijing and other places? This is what we want to observe and shoot. This is a major part of our life photography class.

Our first stop is Dunhuang, Gansu. Dunhuang embodies the history and culture of the Chinese nation. This former silk town has become a city dominated by agriculture and tourism. In terms of construction scale, Dunhuang City is small but very standardized. There are a lot of rural areas around, and the roads there are not as straight as the urban area, it is more life-like. The residents there are Han and Uighurs. The Han people brushed the wall into earthy yellow, while the Uighurs painted the wall white. This is a very interesting phenomenon, and Dunhuang left us with the most intuitive feeling. In the following days, we learned more about Dunhuang. Here, growing fruit and cotton is the most common means of earning a living. Therefore, with this theme, we walked into the home of Dunhuang people, exchanged opinions with them, and let them clearly understand that we are students, to record the development and construction of Dunhuang. After establishing this friendship, we are more comfortable when we shoot their daily life. The well-understood shots often capture details that are not usually noticed.

After having a certain understanding of the city, we recorded some unique scenery in the northwest. The treasure of the nation - Mogao Grottoes. Only when you get here, can you feel that you can't get it. The reason why Mogao Grottoes can be proud of foreign history is that it is a layer of civilization for more than a thousand years. Looking at the Mogao Grottoes, it is not a specimen that has been dead for more than a thousand years, but a life that has lived for more than a thousand years. Then we went to Yangguan and Yumenguan, and the ancient monuments were really amazing. "The West is out of the Yangguan no reason", "the spring breeze is not Yumenguan", these are all familiar phrases, when we look up to the ancient city, we can truly appreciate this feeling of desolate. The last stop in Dunhuang was Yadan. There is no road here, and the traffic is inconvenient. It is deeply hidden in the hinterland of the desert and is not known to the world. There was a windfall in the process of filming the Yadan landform. Under the active efforts of the teachers, the locals led us into Lop Nur, formerly known as the “Death Zone”. What we never imagined is that there are a group of gold miners working and living here. We are curious to understand them. Here, the food and drink must be shipped from a few hundred kilometers away, and the conditions are quite difficult. In the same way, it is because of our entry that they let them know that there are people who can learn from us. During the filming process, in the constant communication with them, we learned that the amount of labor they use to mine gold mines every day is quite large, but the harvest is small. And they don't care about the hard work environment, so we pay more attention to the movements and looks of their work. It is with this feeling that we gradually realize what is documentary photography. The process of documentary photography is a process of thinking about problems. Before going to the gold mine, the teacher arranged the work according to the state and method of shooting gold mines by foreign photographers. Therefore, we must take the title of the book with a purpose to shoot, and only then can we not blindly shoot, in order to fully demonstrate the theme.

After leaving Dunhuang, after Jiayuguan, I came to Jiuquan City. This is a heavy industrial city, because the large steel industry base in the northwest is here, so the construction of the entire city is basically for the wine steel. Originally, the steel plant made me feel very backward, but after visiting the Jiugang Exhibition Hall, I could not help but marvel. From this, we can know the development of technology and industry in Jiugang. But behind the development, it has also paid countless efforts. It can be said that the development of Jiuquan is the development of the city of Jiuquan. In the 1950s, under the call of the state, a large number of workers and technicians came here from all sides of the motherland and with the ideal of building the motherland. They defeated themselves in a fearless spirit and defeated the Gobi. After 4 generations of wine steel people, more than 40 years of hard work, a piece of Gobi beach, turned into a modern steel industrial city, and formed a complete industrial system, maintaining the stable and high-speed development of wine steel. When we saw the history of the development of wine steel, we understood the profound meaning of "advance with the times." The winemaker created the “wine mill” and the wine mill also made the winemaker. When we walked into the wine steel, they were stunned by the wide factory building and the deafening roar. Careful observation of the steel workers, you will feel that they are the real evaluation of the wine steel, they regard this as their home. They can use a hot steel plate to heat the lunch box. If you don't experience it yourself, it is impossible to understand the other side of the wine steel. Although the northwest is backward, the developed technology of wine and steel can drive the development of the northwest.

Our last stop is the Ejina Banner in Inner Mongolia. It took five hours to drive through this vast land. Here, a satellite launcher is built everywhere, showing a busy scene. The base shoulders the responsibility of national security and is a guarantee for the stable development of the country. It is also a powerful symbol of the country.

Come to the Hu Yanglin we want to shoot, the scenery here is quite beautiful. But the most interesting thing is that we came to the ancient city of Montenegro in Xixia. The driver told us that there is a lot of work on this Gobi desert, let us go. We didn't believe it at first, but as we searched, it was incredible to find a lot of shiny agate, but it was our experience. Although most of the northwestern region is still poor, just look at so many gold mines and so many agates that you can know the importance and correctness of developing and building the northwest. The prospects for the northwest will be very beautiful.

The event is over. As far as I am concerned, the gains are still very big. The life photography class came out of the general small classroom, allowing us to feel more intuitive aspects of society. During these 20 days, we filmed during the day and learned to communicate under the leadership of Teacher Song Jing at night, and solved the problems encountered in the shooting on the same day. Then ask the questions and assignments to be considered the next day, and then go to life to find and choose. This rapid and effective accumulation makes our progress very obvious. This new way of teaching has allowed me to exercise and improve in terms of learning, physical fitness and social understanding. I am more firmly aware of how to be a student of photography, how to face the society, face life, face labor, and face the magnificent mountains and rivers of the motherland. This is not available in the classroom. As far as our whole class is concerned, these 20 days of eating, living, and traveling are all contacted by the classmates themselves, and they are all done very well. During this period, teachers and students worked hard together and exchanged more than usual. Between the students, the teachers and students are more harmonious and trustworthy, and the cohesiveness of the class is further enhanced. Although we will encounter many difficulties in the future, I believe that after this event, we will be able to work together.

On December 17th, my class officially held the Hexi Walking Photography Exhibition of “Northwest Travel”. Use the language of our photography to describe the feelings we have difficulty expressing.