Styles / Pictorialist
Chinese salon photography
- Key: the sun, from behind the subject, high, hard.
Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down. Silhouette: expose for the bright background and leave the subject unlit. Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed. Haze: fog or mist, or a haze machine indoors. Visible beams: smoke, steam or dust in a directional light.
Schematic, not to scale: worked out from the style’s choices. No set-up of this style has been rendered yet.
Drawing Water from the River at Dawn
Lang Jingshan, Drawing Water from the River at Dawn, 1934. Wikimedia Commons, tagged public domain in China and the United States (PD-China-1996). Source: Drawing Water from the River at Dawn at Wikimedia Commons
Mooring in the Misty River at Night
Lang Jingshan, Mooring in the Misty River at Night, 1937. Wikimedia Commons, tagged public domain in China and the United States (PD-China-1996). Source: Mooring in the Misty River at Night at Wikimedia Commons
Pictorial photography by Chinese camera-club and salon photographers in Shanghai, then Hong Kong, Taiwan and Southeast Asia, built on the rules of Chinese ink painting. Lang Jingshan printed several negatives into one shan shui landscape: a near branch, a small figure, a far peak, held apart by mist and empty paper. Tchan Fou-li followed him in composites and Song 'one-corner' pictures, and Hong Kong salon photographers sent warm-toned prints of a lone figure by a bare wall, or of stairwells cut by shafts of sun in smoke, to international salons.
How the look is made
- Compose like a hanging scroll: a detailed foreground (a pine, a bare branch), a small figure or boat in the middle and a peak or roofline far off, with mist or blank paper holding the planes apart.
- Leave most of the frame empty and put the subject in one corner, as in Song 'one-corner' painting: pale water, cloud, sky or a bare sunlit wall is part of the picture, not a gap in it.
- When the scene will not give you the picture, build it in the darkroom: print several negatives in turn onto one sheet and hide the joins in cloud, dodging by hand until the planes read as one place.
- Shoot into the light: wait for sun to fall through smoke, dust or haze in a stairwell, market or alley, and for a figure to step into the shaft; print the surround down dark and keep the haze glowing.
- Finish the print as a picture for the salon wall: crop freely, upright like a hanging scroll for the landscapes or to a narrow strip for the street (Fan Ho's Hurrying Home, 47.9 × 21 cm), tone the silver warm and give it a poetic title; Lang added a brushed inscription and a red seal to some prints.
Shoot sheet for your kit
Fill in your camera, lenses and lights, and the sheet says which light plays each part, what to work around and where to start on your camera. Without a kit it starts on a full-frame camera.
Light
Key: the sun, from behind the subject, high, hard.
- Key high: about 30–45° above eye level, angled down.
- Silhouette: expose for the bright background and leave the subject unlit.
- Open shadows: bright surroundings (walls, ground, sky) fill them; no reflector needed.
- Haze: fog or mist, or a haze machine indoors.
- Visible beams: smoke, steam or dust in a directional light.
- Shadow edges
- Shadows that fade gradually from light to dark, cast by a large or diffused light: a window, a softbox, a cloudy sky. Shadows with crisp outlines, cast by a small or distant light: direct sun, a bare flash, a spotlight.
- Shadow depth
- Shadows kept light and full of detail by a reflector, a fill light, bounce or bright surroundings (a low lighting ratio, up to about 3:1: the shadow side at most a stop and a half darker).
- Shape & form
- Shadows thrown away from what casts them (a figure’s long shadow, railings on a wall) that become shapes of their own in the composition.
How the style is lit
- The diffuse light of morning mist, cloud or haze, so far planes dissolve into blank paper and near branches read as dark ink.
- Shafts of sun from a high opening into a stairwell, market or alley, made visible by smoke or dust, the figures backlit and the surround printed down to black.
- Low hard sun raking along walls and streets to throw long diagonal shadows.
This plan is worked out from the style’s choices, so it is drawn as a schematic. One way to get the light, not a record of how any photograph was lit.
Lens and settings
Start at
On a full-frame camera: the same depth of field and exposure as the style’s own numbers, in the same light. Then meter and adjust.
- The style’s f/9.5 on 6 × 6 cm gives about the depth of field of f/5.2 on full frame.
- Then
- 40–50 mm · f/5.6–f/16 · 1/250–1/30 s · ISO 50–200 on 6 × 6 cm, inferred from the gear and the look. Fan Ho's only camera was a Rolleiflex 3.5 A with a fixed 75 mm lens (about 41 mm equivalent). Stops, times and film speeds are inferred: f/8–f/16 at 1/30–1/250 s in hard sun or backlit haze, on medium-speed roll film, then cropped hard in the enlarger.
- Angle
- Looking down on the subject.
- Distance
- Standing well back; people are small.
- Balance
- The subject placed off-centre, balanced against open space. Tilted lines and oblique movement drive the picture.
- Crop & fill
- A small subject in a large empty field.
- Depth
- Separate events in the foreground, middle ground and background.
- Instant
- Gesture and geometry peak together in one instant.
- Duration
- An unmoving scene, exposed slowly and carefully.
Direct
Keep figures small, anonymous and never posed for a portrait: a carrier walking with buckets on a shoulder pole, a boatman poling, a passer-by stepping into a shaft of light or climbing a stair with back turned, a woman standing by a wall with head bowed; nobody looks at the lens, and many pictures have no figure at all.
- Body position
- Caught or posed in mid-step, one foot lifted, clothes swinging.
- Without a pose
- No people at all, or people so small or far off that their pose does not read (hands alone are Hands alone).
- The moment
- People photographed as they are, unaware or unconcerned.
- The set-up
- A scene staged and directed like a film still or a painting.
Style the set
Nothing dressed for the camera: mountains, rivers, markets and stairwells as found, people in their own work clothes; at most a friend or relative in a plain dark dress, posed by a bare sunlit wall chosen for its light.
- How much is styled
- Nothing dressed, made up, moved or added for the picture.
Finish
- Monochrome
- Low contrast and gentle greys. Rich blacks, clean whites and every grey between. A monochrome image tinted sepia, brown, selenium purple or cyanotype blue.
- Film
- Roll film in a medium-format camera, often square.
- Post-production
- Several photographs combined into one picture. Areas lightened and darkened by hand in printing.
- Shown as
- Each picture stands on its own.
- Shown in
- Large prints on the wall, like paintings.
Stay away from testimony & advocacy, filled frame, direct on-camera flash, tilted angle, snapshot, straight print, eyes to the lens and flat form.
Before you shoot it
Seals and inscriptions carry names and meanings in the Chinese literati tradition; do not add invented seals, imitation signatures or garbled characters, only a real inscription by the maker or none. The Hong Kong street pictures show real, often identifiable hawkers, labourers, women and children in markets, stairways and back lanes, chosen as pictorial figures; salon photography steered clear of 'upsetting images' (as a study of Singapore's salons notes) and could turn hardship into atmosphere, so do not use the style to prettify poverty, and ask people before publishing new work. Salon exhibitions also invited the picturesque: the guidelines of the South-East Asia Photographic Society's 1961 exhibition Know Our Singapore listed 'the customs and rituals of different races' as subject matter, and boatmen and water carriers are printed into the landscapes as scenery. Do not stage ethnic dress, rituals or working communities as decor. Most prints are in copyright through the photographers and their estates (M+ credits Lang's Majestic Solitude © Long Chin-San and Fan Ho's prints © Fan Ho; Tchan Fou-li died in 2018); a few of Lang's 1930s pictures are hosted on Wikimedia Commons as public domain (PD-China-1996), on the undocumented assumption that they were published in China at the time.
Where to see it
From open collections, shown whole with their credits. Later photographs are linked, not shown, while they are in copyright.
In copyright, so linked
- Majestic Solitude (春樹奇峰) , Lang Jingshan (Long Chin-San), 1934. M+, Hong Kong.
- Approaching Shadow , Fan Ho, 1954. Christie's.
- Smoky World (迷離世界) , Fan Ho, 1959. M+, Hong Kong.
With other styles
Pairs with Pictorialism. Both soften and tone the print; take from the Chinese salon the empty field and the one-corner composition instead of overall soft focus when the brief needs air rather than haze.
The opposite: French humanist photography. Both walked the 1950s city, but the humanists printed the whole found moment for magazines while the Hong Kong salon cropped hard, waited for staged-looking shafts of light and polished a single print for competition. By Fan Ho's own account, salon juries wanted 'pictorial aesthetics' and rarely selected his realistic street photographs, so the salon took his light and geometry, not his reportage; decide whether the brief wants witness or picture.
The opposite: Straight photography. Straight photography forbids what defines Lang's composites, several negatives in one print and joins hidden in painted mist; print one mountain both ways to decide whether the picture must be true to a single moment.
Sources
- Lang Jingshan, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lang_Jingshan (1892–1995; Hu Boxiang, Chen Wanli and Zhang Xiuzhen founded the China Photography Association in Shanghai in 1928, with Lang a key participant; RPS exhibitions 1937 and 1940; moved to Taiwan 1949 and refounded the association in Taipei in March 1953; composite pictures from several negatives printed in the darkroom, light controlled by hand; occasionally brush and ink on the negatives; influenced Tchan Fou-li in Hong Kong)
- Majestic Solitude (春樹奇峰), Lang Jingshan, 1934, M+, Hong Kong, 2018.244: https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/majestic-solitude-2018244/ (his first experimental composite; Huangshan; hanging-scroll conventions and shifting perspective: high distant peak, band of cloud as empty space, detailed foreground trees; © Long Chin-San)
- Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres, 'Lang Jingshan and early Chinese photography', Smarthistory, 4 September 2020: https://smarthistory.org/lang-jingshan-early-chinese-photography/ (Chinese Society of Photography, Shanghai, 1928; composite photography developed in the early 1930s by combination printing; Riverside Spring 1934 compared with Guo Xi's Early Spring: foreground trees, middle-ground figure, far peaks, joins blurred like mist; negatives reused and flipped; ink calligraphy and red seal on prints; Lang's 1942 text 'Composite Pictures and Chinese Art')
- Birds Twittering amid Cloud-clad Peaks, Lang Jingshan, 1940, Art Institute of Chicago, 2026.48: https://www.artic.edu/artworks/283466 (gelatin silver print, 38 × 30.5 cm, inscribed 'Au printemps 1940' on verso)
- Sue Wang, CAFA Art Info, 24 October 2013, 'Distant Melody from Quiet Mountains' at the National Art Museum of China: https://web.archive.org/web/2016/http://en.cafa.com.cn/distant-melody-from-quiet-mountains-special-exhibition-of-lang-ching-shan-photography-art-debut-at-national-art-museum-of-china.html, archived; the live page is gone (Lang joined Western photographic technique with Chinese painting theory in 'Chinese Collection Photographic Art', overlapping several images in the darkroom; 134 works donated to NAMOC)
- Fan Ho, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Ho (1931–2016; Shanghai to Hong Kong 1949; Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex; over 280 awards in international exhibitions from 1956; PSA top ten 1958–1965; Fellow of the RPS and PSA; Approaching Shadow 1954, a cousin posed by a wall at Queen's College, Causeway Bay, with a diagonal shadow added in the darkroom; in his reply quoted in the afterword of Portrait of Hong Kong: 'My realistic street photos are rarely selected' and 'Pictorial aesthetics and images with a sense of humor are still the key for salon photos')
- Ellen Oredsson, '10 Facts about the Photographer Who Captured 1950s and ’60s Hong Kong', M+ Magazine, 27 September 2018: https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/magazine/10-facts-about-the-photographer-who-documented-1950s-and-60s-hong-kong/ (photography as 'the art of light'; waited for the right light; black and white 'offers me a distance'; On the Stage of Life 1954 staged with classmates; School is Over 1963 cropped to a narrow format; over 200 awards)
- Smoky World (1959), M+ 2015.33: https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/smoky-world-201533/ ; Afternoon Chat (1959), M+ 2015.449: https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/afternoon-chat-2015449/ ; Inferno (1962), M+ 2015.451: https://www.mplus.org.hk/en/collection/objects/inferno-2015451/ (Fan Ho; Central Market stairways and walkways with shafts of sunlight lighting smoke and dust, low angle, silhouettes; Smoky World is a gelatin silver print, while M+ holds Afternoon Chat and Inferno as pigment prints, gifts of Fan Ho in 2015, not as period salon prints; all © Fan Ho)
- Hurrying Home (1956), Fan Ho, Phillips: https://www.phillips.com/detail/-fan-ho/134735 (gelatin silver print 47.9 × 21 cm, a tall narrow crop; 'experimentations with camera angles and cropping' and 'dramatic use of light and shadow')
- Approaching Shadow, Fan Ho, Christie's, sale 15768, lot 85: https://www.christies.com.cn/lot/lot-6131938 (dated 1954; gelatin silver print, 48.2 × 27.9 cm; credited, titled and dated '1955' in ink, with a stamped photographer's credit and an affixed '1958 South Shields International Salon of Photography' label on the verso; exhibited at that salon in 1958)
- Tchan Fou-li, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tchan_Fou-li (1916–2018; influenced by Lang Jingshan; printed several negatives into one image to evoke Chinese painting; Ma Yuan's 'one corner' composition in the early 1950s; black and white and empty space as solidity and emptiness; founded the Chinese Photographic Association of Hong Kong)
- Hong Kong Government press release, 'Exhibition reviews art photography in Hong Kong', 28 March 2009: https://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/200903/28/P200903270347_print.htm (The Verve of Light and Shadow, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 120 works by Tchan Fou-li, Kan Hing-fook and Leo KK Wong; pictorialism a mainstream movement in Hong Kong photography from the 1950s to the 1980s, aiming at painterly effects and blending Eastern elements)
- news.gov.hk, 'Kan Hing-fook's photos go on show', 21 July 2007: https://www.news.gov.hk/isd/ebulletin/en/category/healthandcommunity/070721/html/070721en05006.htm (Water Palette, Hong Kong 1953, gold medal at the VIII International Salon Photographic Exhibition 1954, the first Chinese photographer to receive it; PSA member)
- Zhuang Wubin, 'A history of salon photography in Singapore', Culturepaedia, Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre: https://culturepaedia.singaporeccc.org.sg/art/a-history-of-salon-photography-in-singapore/ (the term shalong first popularised in Hong Kong; Hong Kong the 'kingdom of salon' and centre of Chinese-language publishing for Southeast Asia; Photoart 1960–63 and Photo Pictorial 1964–2005; balanced composition and precise tones; replication of winning shots; avoidance of 'upsetting images'; the South-East Asia Photographic Society's 1961 exhibition Know Our Singapore listed 'the customs and rituals of different races' as subject matter; the Singapore Colour Photographic Society formed in 1967 as colour photography became common; stagnation by the late 1970s)
- How Fan Ho, Hong Kong's poet with a camera, found his calling – in his own words, Stuart Heaver, South China Morning Post (20 June 2017), reposted by MCLC Resource Center: https://u.osu.edu/mclc/?p=20474 (Fan Ho only ever owned one camera, a classic Rolleiflex 3.5 A (type K4A), bought when he was 18)
- Fan Ho, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Ho (a Rolleiflex from his father; he used the same Rolleiflex K4A throughout his career; Approaching Shadow's diagonal shadow added in the darkroom)
- Rollei Rolleiflex 3.5 Automat (Model I) (K4A / RF111A), Kamerastore: https://kamerastore.com/en-dk/products/rollei-rolleiflex-3-5-automat-model-i-k4a-rf111a-tlr-t149840 (taking lens a 75 mm f/3.5 Zeiss Tessar or Schneider Xenar)
- Lang Jingshan and early Chinese photography, Smarthistory: https://smarthistory.org/lang-jingshan-early-chinese-photography (composite photographs printed from several negatives in the darkroom; no camera named)