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Lang Jingshan 郎靜山
The Raft 金波泛筏
1930
Lang Jingshan’s prolific output earned him the name ‘father of Asian photography’, and he is known for his pioneering explorations with darkroom manipulations and for the painterly worlds he created. Lang worked commercially as a photojournalist, capturing a range of subjects, including urban culture, landscapes, and bird and flower compositions, and he was the first Chinese artist to explore the nude form. His compositions and understanding of light and shadow, while strikingly modern, are clearly sourced from ink paintings.
The Raft (also titled Skiff on River) is testimony to Lang’s technical skills and timing. It is a simple composition depicting a scene of commerce that is set on a river in Zhejiang Province, but that is ubiquitous in any river town in southern China. The monochromatic contrasts, the diagonal composition that lengthens the pictorial depth, the anonymous figure, and the vertical signature in the upper left are borrowed directly from the tradition of landscape painting. The setting sun shimmering on the water resembles repetitive brush strokes, but the photographic clarity and detailed view of the skiff’s contents draw viewers into a social dimension, resulting in a poetic documentation of everyday life.
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