Sixth Tone Joins Dali International Photography Exhibition- 大数跨境

Sixth Tone Joins Dali International Photography Exhibition

Sixth Tone

2021-09-23

导读：Sixth Tone Joins Dali International Photography Exhibition

The ideal photojournalist is always first on the scene. Whether it’s an earthquake, flood, or the early days of a pandemic, they capture what they see and transmit it around the world. The right photo can tell a story, provoke an emotional response, even shape our collective memory.

But that’s not all there is to photojournalism. Sometimes it’s about the small observations, the snapshots of daily life through which the photographer re-examines the familiar and finds new avenues for interpretation. Then there is the middle ground: the flashes between breaking news and quotidian details, like the eerie calm that prevails before a storm, or the quiet devastation it leaves in its wake.

These are the kinds of images Sixth Tone has chosen to spotlight in its show, “Quiet Scenes,” at this year’s Dali International Photography Exhibition (DIPE). After a yearlong hiatus due to COVID-19, DIPE returns to the beautiful southwestern Yunnan province this September with 600 shows and over 20,000 works. Among them are photos and multimedia pieces by four Sixth Tone photojournalists: Wu Huiyuan, Shi Yangkun, Zhou Pinglang, and Daniel Holmes.

Founded in 2009, DIPE is one of a new generation of contemporary photography shows in China, attracting media professionals, artists, and photography enthusiasts from across the Chinese mainland and around the world. This year’s exhibition will be held in Dali from Sept. 27 to Oct. 31. Over the course of the next month, Sixth Tone will organize offline and online panels and events, including an in-person audience discussion with photographer Shi Yangkun in Dali on Sept. 27 and an online panel with Dutch photojournalist and curator Ruben Lundgren on Oct. 18.

Introduction to the works on display:

SHI YANGKUN entered Wuhan as a photojournalist during the city’s lockdown last spring. In addition to reporting on the pandemic, he used a film camera to document the return of nature to the city’s suddenly abandoned parks. In his series “Late Spring,” Shi questions claims to objective truth by generating doubts about what is — and is not — readily visible to the human eye.

WU HUIYUAN has trained his lens on a wide variety of subjects over the course of his career: floods, migrations, frozen wastelands, and the decaying remnants of China’s “Rust Belt.” His photo series “By the Water” consists of photos taken while on reporting trips, but outside the scope of breaking news. In them, the underlying conflicts are concealed, but not obscured by the contemplative nature of their composition.

ZHOU PINGLANG’s “High Rise” consists of a variety of projects. Unable to travel due to COVID-19, Zhou spent months exploring Shanghai’s lesser-known districts by rail — an experience that transformed his view of the Chinese megacity. By reframing everyday phenomena, he strived to provoke new awareness of old societal issues, and thereby give rise to a deeper collective consciousness and more nuanced society.

DANIEL HOLMES will present two of his documentaries at this year’s Dali International Photography Exhibition. An award-winning British documentary director and cinematographer based in Shanghai, his films spotlight the lives of China’s ethnic minorities, including the proud Evenki reindeer herders of China’s far north and the fading traditions of Yi storytellers in the country’s southwest.