Images

Capturing the moment

By Wang Wenlan (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-06-01 10:13

Residents buy vegetables at Xidan market in Beijing in 1984. Xidan was one of top 10 markets then. Guo Jianshe / for China Daily

Fang Lijun, representative of a new art trend and professional painter, stands in front of his work Smiling Face on Aug 20, 2010. Fang is the founder of the Cynical Realist style in China, and his works often include aggressive and bald figures. Zhang Wei / China Daily

A monk practices kungfu at Shaolin Temple in Songshan, Henan province, on Nov 23, 2010. Feng Yongbin / China Daily

In a flash, 30 years have passed. China Daily was born during the nation's reform and opening-up and has steadily grown since then. Having joined China Daily in its early years, I was fortunate to witness the changes and be a part of the change itself.

In those days, photographs were not important for newspapers. Text was king and photographs only had a supporting role that could be ignored. History was, however, being made in a small gray building near the front gate of the People's Daily. A group of people with a vision decided to publish an English-language newspaper that would go against the grain and use large photographs. It was an innovation then and a sign of the changing times.

The first time I met Feng Xiliang, then editor-in-chief of China Daily, he was having lunch in the cafeteria. He was eating alone. Seeing that I was doing the same, he invited me to sit next to him. He noticed that I had ordered the home-style bean curd and pointed at his own lunch box, "See, we have the same taste!"

His words dispelled my shyness and we often had working lunches together. Feng had a blueprint for the use of photographs. He thought there was so much text on the pages that it looked like ants crawling across the page, while the photographs were more like small ant nests. He said we had to punch a hole in the layout, bigger than our meal boxes, to let air into the page.

The large, lively and true news photographs describing the many facets of life then were like a new, vivid language for many of us. Critics often argued that the space would be better served by more stories. There was enormous pressure on us, but Feng stuck to his principles and we continued to use large photographs.

It was also a time when it was difficult to find suitable large photographs for the front page every night as most of photographs were mailed through couriers. Feng often came to my office to select and crop photographs. In retrospect, his choice of photographs was very insightful and his idea that photographs should have a language of their own, and not just be a decorative element, has now become universally accepted.

Today, digital technology has liberated photojournalists from the "dark room" of developing and enlarging pictures. Computers have changed the process of photo editing and the fun of digital editing is more than visible in our pictures.

As digital cameras and mobile phone cameras developed, photojournalists found that they had an enormous selection of archived digital photographs to work with. A new generation has joined our enterprise in the new century and many of its members have worked and studied abroad. Their involvement has turned our "guerilla-style" operation of the past into a highly professional system.

Linking the past with the future, we also deeply miss those who made important contributions to journalism but had to leave us. Their spirits will forever stay in our hearts.

As China Daily celebrates its 30th anniversary, it also marks a new beginning for many of us. Our best photographs are watching us, like a poem, a song or a story, or an episode from history. To take one photograph is like climbing a mountain. A good photograph is hard to come and rare in the life of a photographer. It is an immense challenge to capture a good photograph. For 30 years, we have been trying to "speak" with our photographs and these images represent some of the things we want to say.

Wang Wenlan is assistant editor-in-chief of China Daily.

Deng Xiaoping, then chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, meets American journalists at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 25, 1985. Wang Wenlan / China Daily

Above: People transport their belongings, collected from the debris of collapsed houses, to a temporary shelter in the quake-hit county of Beichuan, Sichuan province, on June 24, 2008. The devastating May 12 earthquake in Sichuan left more than 80,000 people dead or missing. Huang Yiming / China Daily

Left: Liang Jinwen (right), Huang Xiaomei and their son pose for a picture at their vegetable field in Napo county of Baise, the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region on Jan 8, 2011. The building behind them is a diaojiaolou, typical of Yunnan province. Huo Yan / China Daily

Tan Mingzhi, the headmaster of a school in Hongshui village, salutes the national flag with his students in the Changjiang Li autonomous county of Hainan province on Oct 9, 1999. Huoyan / China Daily

(China Daily 06/01/2011 page18)