A reflection of time
——Remember the famous portrait photographer Zhang Qinglin
Li Dongchuan
In those days, going to the photo studio to take pictures had a very sacred sense of ritual, and it left too many precious memories for the world. This family photo was taken in the 34th year of the Republic of China, and the second from the right is three-year-old Zhang Qinglin, snuggled up to his mother's side.
In those days, going to the photo studio to take pictures was a solemn thing, a very strong sense of ceremony, I once saw a family photo of his ancestors, the photo recorded the days - the eleventh year of the Republic of China, more than 100 years.
There are dozens of people in a large family, and the two people sitting in the middle should be his great-grandfather and great-grandmother.
The great-grandfather wore cloth shoes, fat bloomers, a robe and a horse coat, a melon skin hat, and his hair still retains the braids of the Qing Dynasty; The grandmother wore three-inch golden lotus green cloth shoes, the trouser cuffs were wrapped in green cloth strips, a long gown hung down to the knees, and her head was wrapped with embroidered cloth pieces covering the ears on both sides (it should also be a kind of hat, right?). )。
The descendants behind the second elder are those who wear suits and leather shoes, those who wear stand-collar student uniforms, and those who are soldiers, some of whom wear old-fashioned Chinese-style clothes, some of whom wear student clothes with half-long sleeves and skirts on their upper bodies, and some who wear Western-style dresses.
The children who surrounded the great-grandfather and great-grandmother, the little boy wore a melon-skin hat, and the little girl wore pigtails and beautiful bows.......
This photo of "Four Generations in the Same Hall" immediately pulls our thoughts back to that old era.
This is the charm of the photo, and it is the most meaningful reflection of the era that the teachers of the photo studio have left us.
Wedding photography was banned as a bourgeois affair during the Decade Holocaust. In 1976, Zhang Qinglin introduced the wedding dress for the first time, which was still on the verge of confinement at that time, and took the first wedding photo in Zibo City.
I came to Zhangdian in 1974, because of the nature of my work (engaged in publicity), I quickly got to know some photographers, such as Lu Yulu, Sun Qiguang, Chen Yong, etc.
At that time, there were very few people who played with cameras, and these people who played with cameras had almost no contact with the teachers in the photo studio.
In our minds at the time, these were two different professions.
Later, for a long period of time, in people's consciousness, these two different professions have been confused and blurred.
It is only now that I realize that these are two very different fields, one is the photographer without any subjective consciousness; One is the photographer who constantly influences the subject with his subjective consciousness.
When we look at the old photos of the past today, we realize how precious the family photos and personal photos left in the photo studio are for us who have experienced those years.
In the Zhangdian photo studio industry, Mr. Zhang Qinglin is a groundbreaking "photo studio person", and I will tell you about this slowly.
The first generation of "photo studio people" had Guo Dongbo (who entered "Yunsheng" in the thirties of the last century), at that time Mr. Guo was mainly engaged in negative picture retouching, because he wrote a good hand, and the photos were inscribed by him until the beginning of the eighties, and later because of the use of computers, handwriting completely withdrew from the photography industry. Liu Zhenyu (who entered "Fengshan" in the thirties of the last century), as the director of the "Fengshan Photo Studio", has been engaged in photography in the Zhangdian photography industry until retirement.
Zhangdian's photography industry began in the 30s of the last century, when Wang Fengshan, a native of Boxing, came to Zhangdian to start a photography business, and in 1938, he opened a "Fengshan Photo Studio" on Zhangdian Sanma Road, and at the same time, Li Yunsheng opened a "Yunsheng Photo Studio" and so on.
In 1956, after the public-private partnership, the state-run "Public Photo Studio" was established.
When photography first came to China, it was spread as a livelihood. At that time, "photography" was a very mysterious and ingenious technology in the eyes of ordinary people, so much so that for a long time, many people believed that it would hook the soul.
The mystery of photography determines that the photo studio industry has a special way of inheritance - master and apprentice transmission, so in that era, apprentices in photo studios had almost no requirements for "culture".
Mr. Zhang Qinglin, who studied in the "High School Attached to Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts", went to the "Public Photo Studio" in 1962, and he became the first practitioner with a cultural and art foundation in the Zhangdian photography industry.
This determined that he was fundamentally different from the master-apprentice inheritance of his predecessors in the photo studio, and determined that he was different in terms of pattern vision in the later photography industry.
In terms of the inheritance of the photography industry, he should be the second generation of "photo studio" people, and in terms of the inheritance of the photo studio, Zhang Qinglin is fundamentally different from the first generation of photo studio people.
He was the first photographer to introduce the concept of photography in studio shooting.
As I mentioned at the beginning, in addition to relying entirely on one's own experience in terms of composition and lighting, the studio mainly captures the best state of the people, and does not participate in one's own subjective consciousness at all in terms of the subject.
To this day, I still clearly remember the scene that Mr. Qinglin shot in the studio in that era: first drill under the lens hood of the landline to install the negative, then put his head out of the cloth cover, hold the rubber airbag shutter controller, shout: "Come, look here", and at the same time put his hand in front of the landline, "Smile, one, two, three, okay... Phew...".
I remember that my son's "100 days of light" was taken by Mr. Qinglin himself, and I saw him holding a rattle and shaking vigorously, and the continuous sound of "bang-la-la" finally amused my son, leaving a very wonderful 100-day photo for my son.
Mr. Qinglin was the first person to introduce wedding dresses to Zhangdian after the Cultural Revolution, when he took wedding photos for Sun Qiguang and his wife, who were engaged in photography in the Cultural Center, hung in the window of the "Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Photo Studio" on Sanma Road, which caused quite a stir in Zhangdian and attracted many onlookers every day.
Zhang Qinglin's school experience, so that his photography career and the "master and apprentice inheritance" of the first generation of "photo studio people" has a clear difference, he was the first to bring his own subjective consciousness into the photographed characters, he with his unique perspective for the Shandong Repertory Theatre actor Hu Zhaofeng to take a portrait photo, deeply loved by the photographed, and won the gold medal of the first national portrait photography exhibition with the title of "The Man Who Will Not Fall". He was also elected as a judge at the National Portrait Photography Exhibition.
Mr. Qinglin was also the first person in the photo studio industry to bring personal consciousness into photography.
For a long time, the photographer of the photo studio has been pursuing how to take a festive atmosphere in the "family photo", and show the most beautiful aspects of the person in the personal photo, in a word, the object is objectively displayed.
However, for the first time in the shooting, Mr. Qinglin injected his subjective consciousness into the subject, the most typical of which is the painting "The Man Who Will Not Fall".
At that time, the Shandong Repertory Theatre came to Zibo to perform, and the image of actor Hu Zhaofeng had a kind of masculinity, so he was invited to the "Luzhong Color Photography Center" to take pictures. In one fell swoop, Mr. Zhang Qinglin established his position in the national portrait photography and became a judge of the "National Portrait Photography Exhibition".
With the efforts of Zhang Qinglin and other teachers in the photo studio, the Zhangdian photography industry has a great reputation in the industry.
In the portrait photos in the photo studio, Zhang Qinglin's portraits taken with his own unique aesthetic vision are deeply loved by the people being photographed. This is a photo taken in 1991 for film actor Yang Zichun.
At that time, the famous Chinese violinist Sheng Zhonghua, the famous Peking Opera actor Yuan Shihai, and the heroine of the Peking Opera "Cuckoo Mountain" "Ke Xiang" Yang Chunxia all came to take pictures.
In the seventies of the last century, the "Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Photo Studio" was built, and its pattern and scale were unique in Zhangdian at that time, and the drawings of its construction from design to decoration were all from the hands of Mr. Zhang Qinglin.
At that time, the construction and decoration of seven or eight photo studios in Zhangdian photography industry, such as "Long March Photo Studio" and "Yingmei Photo Studio", were designed and completed by Mr. Qinglin himself.
Qinglin also has a performance worth writing, that is, he was the first in the city to introduce a color amplifier, set up the "Luzhong Color Photography Center", and served as the first manager.
At that time, color photography was just emerging, and people had to send color photos to Qingdao and Beijing to expand. The establishment of "Luzhong Color Photography Center" has greatly facilitated the needs of the majority of color photography enthusiasts in Zibo and made great contributions to the development of photography in Zibo.
The concept of photography has changed from photography in the photo studio to photography; From Zhangdian photography industry from humble to high-grade; Especially in the city's first introduction of color expansion...... Mr. Zhang Qinglin's development and influence on the photography industry in Zhangdian is of milestone significance.
Today, when our society has entered the era of national photography, we must not forget the "photo studio era" that we have experienced in the long years, and the reason why many of our families and individuals can still see the image of our ancestors after decades or even a hundred years must be grateful to teachers like Mr. Zhang Qinglin in the "photo studio era", who left us the image of time and made the moment solidified into eternity.
This is a photo taken by Zhang Qinglin for the famous singer Zheng Xulan (left) in 1979 and Yang Chunxia (right) for the famous Peking Opera artist in 1990.
October 3, 2024