Chine

by Yann Layma, José Frèches, Anne Loussouarn

1979 : la Chine entrouvre enfin de lourdes portes sur ses secrets. Un nouveau timonier du nom de Deng Xiaoping lance le pays sur les rails des réformes. Yann Layma, jeune passionné d'entomologie, se prend d'un rêve fou : animé du désir de comprendre la singularité chinoise, il décide de se fondre dans cette civilisation, de s'en imprégner, de se noyer dans l'immensité pour y porter un regard unique. La Chine sera son révélateur d'âme, son aventure personnelle, un de ces voyages dont on ne revient jamais le même. Amoureux de la lumière et des instants furtifs où les personnages croisés sur la route livrent un peu de leur âme dans une pose, un regard ou un geste, Yann Layma offre un recueil d'impressions colorées où la Chine se raconte dans la diversité et la magie des couleurs
Mais la Chine n'est pas seulement ce pays de rizières magiques. Photographies et écrits soulignent alors une lutte permanente entre l'individu et la masse, entre les traditions séculaires et un modernisme détonant
Les textes de grandes plumes, auteurs chinois ou spécialistes de la Chine, dressent un portrait contemporain de ce pays aux cinq mille ans d'histoire, l'un des plus vastes, le plus peuplé et le plus méconnu du monde et permettent d'offrir un éclairage singulier aux photos de Yann Layma. Les vingt ans de pérégrinations chinoises de Yann Layma constituent une aventure unique et ce livre, un témoignage qui fera date

Genres: Photography, China

424 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Born in 1962 in France, the self-taught photographer Yann Layma (called Yan Lei in Chinese) has witnessed the changes, the opening and the economic boom of China. Layma studied Chinese language at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris and then at the National Taiwan University, before moving to China (Beijing) where he would spend almost two decades documenting it.
His colorist and humanist approach to photography was soon noticed, and international magazines published his works, such as Paris Match, Le Figaro Magazine, Stern, Life, Time, le New York Times, le Sunday Times, El País, and GEO for whom he worked with for many years. His dedication to portray China through the camera allowed him to constitute an extensive visual archive, while exhibiting and publishing his photographs and personal experience.

Reviews

[Brit Cheung · Rating 3 out of 5]

To give a clear account of What China was and how it is now is a daunting task, whereas pictures are more expressive and compelling than many other forms, at least they offered a glimpse of the old stories.The collection of photos are remote memories of the past. But as Shakespeareput it, what's past is prologue. From this perspective, old pictures are more than captured moments of what once occurred, they are connections towards the present and even future.

Prior to setting down anything, allowme to invoke a statement I saw today as the prologue of this .

“你匆匆一瞥的故事与随手翻阅的画册，却是他人的一生。生命的坚韧总是超出我们的想象，我知道这个世界上永远有人比我们生活的更加艰难，但我依然愿意称他们为生活而不是生存。”

"The pages of stories you glance at, or photos you flip through thoughtlessly tell the stories of real people, real lives. The tenacity of life often far exceeds our ability to imagine. But while I am well aware that there are many people with lives far harsher than mine, I would prefer to believe that they are living their lives, struggling and finding successes wherever they can, rather than accept as given that their lives are about nothing beyond mere survival. "


This is a photograph album about China mainly ranging from 1985 to 1995. The author named himself or some other people rendered him a name as“Yan Lei”（阎雷）（ thunder in the hell）. Whether his name carried an implication or not remained a mystery for me but it is a truth that he was one of the few westerners,if not the only one, who was authorized to access to China to photograph this alien land from the outside world after China taking its opening up.

The collection emcapsulated broad dimensions of what a real China was like then. The panorama of the society, people, landscape, architectures flowed before eyes like a smooth river with your flipping through the pages. The old pictures captured those lost moments as if they have never been far away.

Yann Layma did a great job in capturing the authentic rather than ornamented China. He concentrated his attention on the real , plain, earthly life of ordinary people and recorded nuances of transient expressions.

Glimpses into these pictures can easily evoke people's reminiscence of the past and compelled you to contemplate how much China has changed. They witnessed the past and will illuminate the road ahead.

So just go ahead and don't dwell on the past too much, China.
（special acknowledgement to my firend Will who helped to do the brilliant Chinese-English translation .He said he didn't know Chinese, but his sense about this language is exceedingly penetrating :）)

[Garrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breathtaking photography and well written essays. The culture addendum seems out of place, as do the pearls of wisdom pages, but otherwise a very mixed and intense look inside China.

[Junwei Cui · Rating 4 out of 5]

隔靴搔痒，又或者那个时代和这个时代有什么不同