「Look at the Picture and Talk about the Painting」Lang Jingshan: Let Photography Understand the Poetic Spirit of the East

The candid statement, “The camera is more important than my wife,” coupled with his unwavering dedication to capturing scenes on Mount Huang at the age of 103, demonstrates throughout his life how deeply passionate Lang Jingshan was about photography.

He drew inspiration from the literati paintings of Ni Zan and others in the Yuan Dynasty, incorporating the concept of empty space and blankness into his works. He constructed a three-part composition of “near foreground, middle focal point, and distant blankness”, endowing “Spring Trees and Strange Peaks” and “Boating in the Misty Rain” with an oriental artistic atmosphere of ink and water. At the same time, he utilized Western collage and darkroom layer exposure techniques, capturing the spiritual essence of mountains and rivers with a camera, and manually controlling light in the darkroom to refine details. Through the cutting and recombination of multiple negatives, he presented non-existent mountain and water scenes in a way that conforms to the logic of oriental aesthetics. This creative approach achieved a breakthrough half a century earlier than the digital age.

Lang Jingshan’s pursuit was not to replicate tradition but to have Western techniques precisely serve Eastern aesthetics. He achieved the experience of scattered-point perspective through collage and recombination, and replicated the gradation and texture of “five shades of ink” with layer exposure. This wisdom of rooting in cultural origins and skillfully using diverse tools enabled photography, a technology from the West, to truly become a carrier of the thousand-year-old Eastern charm.

The tea for today is all gone. Next time, I’ll brew a fresh pot and enjoy art with you again.