Chen Man is the most coveted Chinese photographer of her generation. She cultivated her passion since she was very young and it’s enough to look at her in the eyes, slightly severe and serious, to understand that photography is her true love. She started to print photos as a girl, thanks to her mother who “was not able to make her dreams come true so she put all her energy and expectations on me”. And so Man attended many art schools, from the Central Academy of Fine Arts to the college where she studied theater, up to the CAPA, the most important school for set design.
In 2003 she commits full time to photography. “I consider myself an artist and a photographer, and even when I choose different techniques to modify my photos I use these mediums as tools for my job. We don’t have big names in fashion in China and so, not having at my disposal creative and original clothing, I often prefer to photograph faces and people, trying to make all the strength that I can find in them emerge. I love fashion and I like to photograph it. I am the first fashion photographer to portray China in a contemporary way through clothing. I’ve shot in touristic and historic locations like the Great Wall of China or the Forbidden City, places far from fashion. The fashion world was shocked, while artists adored me. Whenever I would show them my book they would consider it too avant-garde”.
Man grew up in the older part of Beijing, where the streets are narrow and the houses have the classic inner courtyards, the areas called “hutong”. “Because I grew up in traditional houses, where fashion had no importance, the internet was a great influence and it inspired me greatly.I mix everything, from Buddhism to Maoism, from fashion to everyday life, to new mass media. I put everything I have seen and lived together. I observe how China has opened itself to fashion today and how everyone wants to be trendy and make trendy purchases and I think it’s a real accomplishment. Today there’s a sort of race to buy foreign brands because they also represent a symbol of wealth. An obsession. But we will soon have our own fashion”.
At 32, Chen Man has been the one to create a new and more modern path for Chinese photography by using Photoshop and 3D without forgetting, though, about the past and tradition of her country. She works for the main Chinese magazines such as Vogue and has already had her work featured in several exhibitions. In 2008 she took part in the exposition China Design Now at the Victoria and Albert Museum of London and one of her photos was chosen as the poster for the whole event. She has published books and continues restlessly to experiment successfully.
Photo by Francesco Carrozzini
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