Luo Yongjin 罗永进

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Luo Yongjin is a Chinese photographer and professor. His deceptively simple photographs reflect on the recent, rapid modernization of contemporary China and the obliteration of the past. He lives and works in Shanghai.

Date & Place of Birth

Luo was born in Beijing in 1960.

Education & Development

In 1982, Luo earned a Bachelor's degree in English from the PLA University of Foreign Languages, Luoyang, and went on to study oil painting at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1988 Luo began his graduate study in art history at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou. While there, he discovered a passion for architecture and photography, subsequently traveling throughout China to document the rapid urbanization of Beijing, Shanghai, Luoyang, and Guandong (also known as Manchuria). From 1998-9, he worked as a freelance photographer and cameraman for China Central TV (CCTV), China's primary television network, before accepting a position as a professor of photography at the Shanghai Institute of Design/China Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai.

Art

As a photographer, Luo Yongjin's deceptively simple, black-and-white photographs can be viewed as a complex meditations on a rapidly disappearing past. Luo is described as a man of few words, allowing his photographs to express, without sentimentality, that which he is unable to speak.

“Celebrations and Celebrities”

In 1996, Luo Yongjin was one of the subjects of Celebrations and Celebrities, a two-person exhibition with the well-known German photographer Thomas Struth at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Not yet incorporating his love of architecture in his art, Luo showed portraits. Rather conventional, they paid homage to artists such as Zhang Peili and Ding Yi. Struth’s architectural photographs so impressed Luo that he was inspired to shift his focus. He recalls:

"In his works, you cannot find the cliche subjects that Chinese are familiar with already. In his works, it is the artist's calm observation of those things that are often unnoticed or ignored that catches your attention Photos of Bernd & Hilla Becher, teachers of Thomas, that are miraculous inside yet ordinary at first sight, also, correspond well to what I want to express. When I took photos of traditional Chinese culture in Luoyang, I was moved by those architectures, but did not finally zoom upon them though, although they found their ways onto my photos as background. [sic.] Thomas gave me inspiration and then I changed to focus upon architecture, as well.

From then on, his identity as a photographer of architecture was set.

“New Residential Buildings”

While studying at the Zhejian Academy of Fine Arts, Luo Yongjin turned to overseas photo albums, to experience non-Chinese modes of visual expression. He began as a traditional “documentary” photographer, as a result of his work at the Audio and Video Center of PLA University of Foreign Languages in Luoyang.

Luo quickly realized its limits and begun to study the emotive effects of light on the built environment. His burgeoning interest in light led to his “New Residential Buildings” series which focuses on the new residential buildings in the old city of Luoyang. (Right: New Residence Luoyang 02, 1997)

He observes that although the new buildings appear simple, he paid careful attention to their form and texture to synthesize the effect of the characteristic parts. These buildings represent changes brought on by the onrush of time. The new city of Luoyang emerges, leaving little memory of the past.

Luo created a second series of new residential buildings in Hangzhou that focus on the palatial villas of the sub-provincial city of Hangzhou, in the Yangtze River Delta. The Baroque style exteriors and extraordinary materials used in their construction are picturesque, in contrast to the buildings of Luoyang. Nevertheless, both present modernization and development of different eras.

(Left: New Residence Hangzhou 24. 2003.Giclée Print.)

(Right: Mosaic Skyscraper, Shanghai. From Art Scene Warehouse.)

"City Scenery" and "Night Tours"

Luo Yongjin lived in Beijing from 1997 to 1998 where he took photographs of enormous new buildings such as “Oriental Plaza.” Unlike his residential series, in which one frame could encompass an entire building, Luo adopted a “mosaic” style to capture the magnitude of these structures. He believes that the assembly of these photos helps express the size of the new buildings, while enabling him to maintain the same level of attention to detail as with his smaller scale projects. It can take Luo two years photographing various angles of a particular building to achieve the effect of captured time he seeks.

In 2001, Luo began working on the “Night Tours” series for which he photographed Shanghai's skyscrapers at night. He began using digital cameras to create vertical compositions, unlike the horizontality of his depictions of buildings in Beijing, and indeed, of the sprawling capital itself. To create a sort of romantic blur, Luo employs time lapse photography and other lighting techniques.

Secondary Activities

Since 2000, Luo Yongjin has been teaching at the Shanghai Institute of Design, China Academy of Fine Arts as a professor of photography.

Exhibitions

After his exhibition with Struth and turn to architectural photography, Luo began to show his work abroad. His first group exhibition outside China was the group show, Anguillara Ad Arte, Anguillara? (1998) in Rome and his solo debut abroad--held at the Photographic Gallery L. Ghirri in Caltagirone, Italy--took place in 2002.

For Luo Yongjin’s CV, please click here.