If a picture is worth a thousand words, then foreign photographers have volumes to say about the Pingyao International Photography Festival in North China's Shanxi Province. Pingyao's ancient architecture and intimate, small-town feel served as an ideal setting for photographic enthusiasts wanting to capture a poignant portrait of China.

"Getting big-name academics and photographers to come here to China is easier than, say, Manchester because everybody wants to come here to take photographs," said David J. Clark, course leader of a joint Master of Arts photography programme between Dalian College of Image Art and the University of Bolton in England, the first such joint programme between Chinese and foreign universities.

"We've had instances where teachers wouldn't come from London to Manchester, but would come to China. London is 200 miles away; Pingyao is on the other side of the world."

The week-long festival, which ended on Friday, showcased more than 10,000 pictures shot by more than 1,600 photographers from 41 countries and regions. More than 20,000 people, from all corners of the globe, visited the festival in the first two days. For foreign photographers, visiting Pingyao is a chance to witness first-hand China's rapid development and experience its exoticism.

"Pingyao sums up China quite well not completely, but as well as any small town can," said Robert Pledge, president of Contact Press Images, Inc, a group of professional photographers documenting social, religious and political issues.

Known for its dynastic architecture and ancient city walls, the 2,700-year-old town fits the archetype created by the first Western photographers who came to China in the 19th century. The towns they photographed featured the same traditional cityscapes as Pingyao, Clark says.

"These (images) are kind of embedded in our brain and when we walk around," he said, waving his hands at the surrounding city, "we see those photographs."

The 2.25-square-kilometre town provides an intimate setting for the industry's rising stars to meet and greet its who's-who. Clark believed the festival was a great networking place for his students who are about to begin their professional lives. "The great thing about Pingyao is the access. At most of the major international photo festivals, it's difficult to get access to the international photographers," Clark said. "There are some very famous photographers here that would be very difficult to access in a festival in the West."

This is what Karrilee Barrett, 32, of London, appreciates most about her Pingyao experience. Barrett, who is taking Clark's International Journalism, Documentary and Travel Photography course, was able to show her recently published photographic book about overweight children in China to members of Contact over breakfast. "In a place like New York or London, you wouldn't sit at breakfast and have them look at your stuff, and I wouldn't have felt as comfortable showing them my work in the first place," Barrett said.

She believed the settings of the exhibitions abandoned factories, vacant warehouses and deserted mills created an informal atmosphere that made newcomers to the business more comfortable when approaching big-names to network or get feedback.

These raw settings, she said, also created an appeal that was unique among international photography festivals.

"It's quite an interesting environment, being in a big shed with lots of photos hanging. It's quite different from anything I've ever been to," Barrett said.

Contact's special projects director, Jacques Menasche, said Pingyao's raw spaces set it apart from the major international festivals of the world. "The spaces are incredible. In Paris or London or New York you find spaces so pristine, with floors so polished, you'd slip on them," he said.

Nobody was slipping on the dirt floor of Contact's exhibition area, warehoused in an abandoned diesel factory with broken windows and high-raftered ceilings.

In celebration of Contact's 30th anniversary, it hung 30 giant contact sheets spanning several square metres from the factory's metal rafters. The enlarged sheets showcased 30 top works of 30 of Contact's top photographers, while 22 satellite exhibitions were fastened to the walls below.

"What's beautiful about this exhibition is the pristine photographs in a raw space," Menasche said. Such unrefined surroundings, he said, were ideal for a group such as Contact, which was "interested in stripping the veneer off photography."

For Pulitzer Prize-winning Contact photographer Edward Keating, exhibiting his work at PIP Festival offered him a chance to "possibly" provide Chinese people a better understanding of the United States.

However, he said, it was difficult to anticipate how another culture would view his photographs.

His exhibition series, which documents the fading glory of America's once famous highway Route 66, intended to dispel the romanticism that surrounds the road the decline of which is scarcely understood by many Americans, let alone Chinese.

"This is the time in China where it is developing its roads and highways. It might just possibly resonate in that sort of way," he said.

While his work might provide Chinese people insight into everyday life in the United States, for Keating, the Pingyao experience was a two-way street.

After arriving in the ancient city, the self-described "street photographer" who specializes in capturing images of daily life, hoped to include images from Pingyao in his exhibition at the Leica Gallery in New York City in 2007. "I'm looking to expand the scope of my life's work and China is un-pioneered territory for me," he said.

As he walked, with camera in hand, through the tiny lanes between the city's ancient walls and traditional-style buildings, he was mesmerised by the sights. He said the subject matter was right up his alley. "I am interested in the people, the architecture and the people's relationship to the architecture," Keating said.

Many international photographers, such as Keating, discovered China through the viewfinders of their cameras at the PIP Festival.

For those hoping to develop a better picture of China, the festival offers a close-up view of the China of yesterday, today and tomorrow.

(China Daily 09/23/2006 page10)