Lang Jingshan

Lang Jingshan was a pioneering photographer and one of the first Chinese photojournalists. He has been called "indisputably the most prominent figure in the history of Chinese art photography", and the "Father of Asian Photography". He joined the Royal Photographic Society in 1937 and gained his Associateship in 1940 and Fellowship in 1942. and in 1980, the Photographic Society of America named him one of the world's top ten master photographers. He was the first Chinese photographer to take artistic nude shots, and was also known for the unique "composite photography" technique he created. Lang Jingshan was born in Huai'an, Jiangsu province, in 1892, but was considered a native of his ancestral hometown Lanxi, Zhejiang, by Chinese convention. His father, Lang Jintang, was a Qing dynasty military officer who was interested in art and photography, and Jingshan grew up influenced by the arts. At age 12, while a student at Nanyang Middle School in Shanghai, he received his first training in photography from his art teacher Li Jinglan, who instructed him in the techniques of photography. In 1911, Lang began working for Shanghai's Shen Bao newspaper in advertising design. In 1926, he joined the Eastern Times newspaper as one of China's first photojournalists. In 1928, Hu Boxiang, Chen Wanli, and Zhang Xiuzhen founded the China Photography Association, China's first art photography association, in Shanghai. Lang, Hu, and manhua artist Ding Song were key participants of the society. Lang's work was multifaceted. Commercial newspaper jobs made him one of China's first photojournalists, but his work in other areas put artistic values first. In 1928, he took what is considered the earliest surviving Chinese artistic nude photograph, "Meditation" (the model's father beat her when he heard what she had done). In 1930, he published the Album of Nude Photographs, the first in China. He exhibited his own work widely including After the Tang Masters in the Royal Photographic Society's 1937 Exhibition and Majestic Solitude (1937) in the Royal Photographic Society's 1940 Exhibition. Lang's photographic works were influenced by the landscape pictures of masters in the Northern Song Dynasty, and he praised also the elegance of the vivid spirit of Chinese painting. It is the first generation of Chinese art photography masters, and his wisdom in art has made the "composite picture（composition in the dark room）". Lang fled to Taiwan in 1949 after the Chinese Civil War, and continued his photographic career there. He also taught photography at the National Taiwan Normal University and the National Taiwan University of Arts. He died in Taipei in 1995 at the age of 102.