Introduction
Somehow for no reason, the west appears to have been snubbed or even forgotten by God.
In the past, from America to China, the west conjured up images of a desolate wilderness, and seemed synonymous with “uncivilized”.
In fact, we must thank God from the bottom of our hearts for having given western China numerous natural wonders and fascinating cultures. Here we can see Mother Nature’s uncanny craftwork, and by picking over ancient fragments lost in the evolution of civilization, find passwords to understand the development of its civilizations.
Looking back at history, Zhuang Xueben in the 1930s was the first photographer to truly record this fertile ground. Traveling through western China for a decade, he took over 10,000 photographs and became the pioneer of the photography of China’s western frontier. Unfortunately, he lost over half the images he took, due to various hardships and tribulations.
The photographer Jin Shouxian, however, has been favored by Fortune. Born and raised in western China, he has traveled in and paid constant attention to this region since 1972. There, he has painstakingly focused his lens upon its natural scenery and human cultures. A favored child of the Muses, he has an artistic eye of great spiritual insight. By making fanciful use of light and shadows, rhythmic lines, and magnificent colors, he truly presents the charm of western China, reveals its scenery, portrays the face-in-the-crowd, depicts the broader world, and so has shot many lovely and refreshing masterpieces of photography. At home and abroad, he is praised by colleagues and is a popular favorite of the general public.
In life, Jin is good at observing, pondering, and displaying both nature and changing times from a unique point of view; depicting with unadorned and emotionally expressive pictures the relationships between people, between individual and society, and between humanity and nature. He has captured and preserved western China’s natural landscape and cultural customs with his thousands of attractive photos. These works illustrate western China’s rich ancient cultures, gorgeous scenery, and natural environment.
Eleven years ago, Mr. Jin held a solo photo exhibition on western China in Hong Kong;eleven years later, he has brought out this new exhibition: “Gorgeous China, The Colorful West (美麗中國 絢彩西部)”.
Mr. Jin is not only a discoverer and recorder of beauty, he also illustrates and propagates it. The works in this exhibition will definitely lead us through time and space to appreciate the colorful and fascinating world of western China.
Wang Qiang
Chief Editor, Chongqing Photographers Post