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Philippe Fatin
Philippe Fatin
Philippe Fatin

Philippe Fatin

Country: France
Birth: 1962

Philippe Fatin is a photographer and a great traveller: after first stays in Mexico and South America, he discovered Asia (Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Japan, Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Korea) and fell in love with China and more particularly with the region of Guizhou. After an interlude with the Wayanas Indians in French Guyana and the publication of his first book Guyane terre d'espace, he multiplies his travels to the Miao people of Guizhou and ends up residing there for more than twenty years. He published a book Randonnée d'un photographe voyageur in China and exhibits at the Guiyang museum, he also publishes in the national and international press. He is also a collector, organized various exhibitions of his personal collections in French museums: Gold and lacquers from Burma, tribal textiles from southwest China, Nuo masks from the exorcism theatre of China accompanied by publications.

In The Mounts of the Moon
When I got off the Trans-Siberian Railway in 1985, I knew nothing about China.
The blue of the heater set the tone on a red background.
I spent the first two years getting to know this culture, before discovering a province in the southwest that was still untouched by any contact with the outside world.
The last Westerners present in the region were missionaries, who were driven out of it in 1949 by the communists.
The province of Guizhou is one of the poorest, along with that of Gansu.
"There are never three days of good weather in a row, the inhabitant does not have three sapeques in his pocket, and there are not three lilies of the flat country." That sets the tone.
This province is rich in the diversity of its ethnic minorities, who had managed to maintain an authentic way of life. The villages still lived in autarky, protected by the mountain rampart. Ninety percent of the territory is karst peaks.
My camera equipment consists of two Leica M6 cameras and four lenses: 28, 35, 50, and 90mm.
With 270 days of rain per year and a constant fog, I use 400 ASA B/W silver film.
The access of this province being forbidden to tourism, the task was not easy.
The game of cat and mouse with the local authorities was not a perennial solution to penetrate these misty mountains concealing so many secrets.
My approach was to establish a base in the provincial capital.
I made "Guangxi" connections, and gained the trust of the people and the local authorities.
I worked hard to make them understand my work of investigating ethnic groups, especially the Miaos.
I obtained special permits to stay in various valleys and villages.
After years, I was able to set up different bases in villages that were completely self-sufficient.
Sharing the intimacy of the people and building trust, I was able to open the doors to them. My curiosity allowed the rest
It would absorb twenty years of my life, during which I photographed a way of life that surged from festivals governed by the gods and the seasons.
The evolution of the country a galloping modernization was going to change the situation.
Obeying the three priorities of the government: water, electricity and roads, the opening up of the province would radically shape a new face of the population and its environment.
In fifteen intervals, my photographic work has thus taken on a patrimonial status.
A massive folklorization of ethnic groups (amusement park, pilot village,) their acculturation by the Han mass, the race for enrichment, have contributed to a new mode of integration of these ethnic minorities.
This modernization of China and its brutal change of vision of society, over a short period of time, swept away ancestral cultures.
Few Westerners have lived in this province, which is now crossed by highways connecting Shanghai, or Guangzhou.
My photos are a testimony acquired over the long term, on a way of life that is disappearing in favour of a strong nationalism.
It seems to me essential to show the cultural richness of this people, (Nine million people).
The province of Guizhou is the home of the Miao diaspora (more than three hundred clans), a threatened melting pot of traditions and rituals mostly ignored by the Han.
Indeed, in this rapidly changing society, the peasant populations, known as "floating", have been the cheap labour of China's economic departure.
 

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More Great Photographers To Discover

Jill Greenberg
United States
1967
Jill Greenberg is an American photographer and Pop artist. She was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Greenberg began photography when she was 9 years old. According to a 1998 New York Times article, Greenberg's mother was a computer programmer and her father was a doctor. Greenberg took classes at Cranbrook Academy of Art and the Detroit Institute of Arts. In 1984, she attended the Photography Summer Session held by Parsons School of Design in Paris. In 1985, she won a Traub Memorial Scholarship Travel Fund from Andover High School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. In 1988, Greenberg completed coursework on Semiotics in Media with Mary Ann Doane at Brown University. In 1989, she graduated with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Photography. She is known for her portraits and fine art work that often features anthropomorphized animals that have been digitally manipulated with painterly effects. Her photography of animals is regarded for its capability to show a wide range of expressions and feelings that are comparable to that of a seasoned actor or actress. Some of the primates she has captured on film are actually celebrated in their own right, having been featured in different TV shows or movies. She is also highly recognized for her distinct, and stylized photography of celebrities including well-known performers such as Gwen Stefani, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Clint Eastwood. She is also known for inserting her own strong opinions into her work. In reference to her work, Greenberg states "They're portraits and they're personal but there's a little twist going on. An edge." In 1992, Greenberg began working for Sassy magazine, doing commercial photography while working on getting her artistic career off the ground. Greenberg is known for celebrity portraits, using painterly effects that are drawn using computer technology. 2011's Glass Ceiling series involved shooting underwater, using scuba gear. She hired professional synchronized swimmers and photographed them in a pool in Culver City. The Glass Ceiling series was featured as a billboard installation in Los Angeles, on the northwest corner of Sunset Boulevard at Fairfax (viewable while driving east). In October 2012, Greenberg published a book of photographs called Horse that features images of horses. Greenberg built photo studios within horse rings to take the photographs. The shooting took place in Los Angeles in an area called Walker's Basin and also in Vancouver at Danny Virtue's ranch, a man who supplies horses to the film industry. In January 2014, Greenberg had an exhibition in Canada of images from Horse In August 2008, The Atlantic asked her to photograph John McCain for the magazine's October 2008 cover. Greenberg said they didn't have enough money to pay her so she gave them a license to use one of her photos for the cover (while she retained ownership of the photo) for free, for one-time use. Greenberg decided to make some personal images of the pictures. "I really didn't want there to be another Republican in the White House, so I decided to put my McCain pictures out on voting day." Saying she saw the work as political cartoons. "I thought it was the Artist Jill Greenberg appropriating the work of the Commercial Photographer Jill Greenberg." Greenberg's End Times, a series of photographs featuring toddlers, was the subject of controversy in 2006 (April 22 – July 8). The work featured stylized hyper-real closeups of children's faces contorted by various emotional distresses. The pieces were titled to reflect Greenberg's frustration with both the Bush administration and Christian Fundamentalism in the United States. The children were either professionally hired or were the children of friends (and included her daughter). All were accompanied by their parents, who assisted in getting the children to cry. The series resulted in active, often heated online discussion and news coverage, and resulted in hate mail which continued for several years. The images, meanwhile, have been imitated and used without permission for unrelated campaigns.Source: Wikipedia
Hsuan Chung
Taiwan
1985
Hsuan Chung is a passionate photographer who started his interest in photography when he was seventeen. During his college years in Taiwan, he taught himself all the skills and techniques of photography and became a professional newspaper journalist before graduation. He wasn't satisfied with his works and wanted improvement. That is when he decided to relocate to Atlanta to work on his M.F.A degree in Photography at Savannah College of Art and Design. During his time working on his degree, he participates in many events and works hard to promote his photography works. With less than a year from graduation, he plans to participate in fundraisers, exhibitions, and other artwork presentation platforms in order to show his works to the public and spread his messages. Edge Since ancient times, human beings have continuously given life to the land and civilization. We constantly create stories and memories in each land which has its own temperature and culture. Everything on the land experiences a cycle of weathering, squeezing, and accumulating, then they disintegrate, and reconstruct to irregular solids. The project is based on my thoughts about the boundary between sea and land. The gravel in the soil is cracked by hitting each other under the lap of the waves, thus forming a new state. The minerals and gravel are brought back to the sea by the waves and become nutrients for microorganisms. The boundary between the sea and the land, that surges at all times but exists forever, is the birthplace of land and life. For me, that is also the end of human civilization. I used the square composition of a medium format camera to metaphorically refer to the concept of 'time' in nature that only humans have. I pressed the shutter after a series of precise calculations, and each square perfectly framed the time and scenery of the moment. In order to let the negative and the seawater fully interact, I soaked the negative in the seawater took from the shooting location. So that the salt and minerals in the seawater are able to remain on the negative. During the development, sea salt and minerals that stay on the negative produce chemical reactions with chemistry and silver halides. Human intervention and uncertain chemistry allow the whole process to create a memory journey between the earth and the sea, human beings and nature. The final images fulfill the purpose of recreating memories of different times and spaces and making them eternal. They not only record the memory of the ocean for 4500 million years but also witness the vitality of everything and the inseparable connection between human beings and the earth.
Thomas Struth
Germany
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Ian Teh
United Kingdom
1971
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United States/Spain
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