Chasing the News: My Journey Through Chinese Photography of the 1980s-90s

Yang Lang, who transitioned from the Vietnam front to China Youth Daily in the 1980s, embarked on a decades-long career in media, personally witnessing and participating in the pivotal transformation of Chinese photography from “propaganda” to “documentary” and “photojournalism.” As a key chronicler and active participant in this shift, Yang Lang engaged with generations of Chinese photographers through interviews, critiques, and public platforms. His representative works include the video series Photo-Gravure. In 1989, he attended the “China/Avant-Garde” exhibition at the National Art Museum of China and participated in its press conference. For him, this landmark exhibition was not only a breakthrough moment for modern art but also deeply resonated with key photographic events of the era—such as the 1987 “The Arduous Journey” and the 1988 “International News Photography Week”—reflecting the inseparable relationship between photography and modern (contemporary) art in the 1980s and 1990s.

If Yang Lang’s experience sketches the backdrop of photography’s transformation, Yan Zhigang’s (also known as “Master Yan”) career offers a mirror, reflecting the entire process of Chinese media’s evolution from market-oriented explorations in the 1990s to the rise and fall of new media waves. In 1997, a single photograph documenting Hong Kong’s return to China elevated him from working for an “internal publication” to a “formally registered magazine,” officially launching his photography career at New Weekly. As one of China’s first market-oriented magazine photographers, he worked alongside pioneering image artists such as Zhang Haier and An Ge, whose original works were also featured in the “Unfinished Time” exhibition.

Yang Lang and Yan Zhigang, two witnesses from different backgrounds, not only mirror the explorations and upheavals that Chinese photography lived through in the 1980s and 1990s, but also guide us—through their personal experiences—in revisiting the unfinished, still unfolding texture of that era.