BY SHEUNG YIU
© Nancy Sheung, The Pigtail, 1966. Silver gelatin print, Courtesy of Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres and the Pong Family
The more I interview photographer, the more I am sure that format, education and socioeconomic background does not matter when it comes to creating great work. Some photographers starts from the slum, some earned a master in photography, some shot frequently with no particular idea on their mind while some conduct intensive research before shooting. The critical element of great photography are vision and passion. And the ultimate example to illustrate this is Nancy Sheung (常惠珍).
© Nancy Sheung
Nancy Sheung was middle-aged when she started photography, she had never received any formal art training, she had kids and she was a woman in the 60s in China, in the era when women are expected to do nothing outside of their family. Yet, none of these stop her from her photography career. She made photography her passion and excel at it, she was listed the world’s top ten photographers of monochrome prints from 1967-1972 and a five-star exhibitor of the Photographic Society of America.
© Nancy Sheung standing next to her work at a photo salon
Female photographers are rare in the sixties. In 1966, the sixth Chinese Photographic Association of Hong Kong member photography exhibition, there were only 3 female members including Nancy, among about 100 members. Most of them either came from rich families or married to photographers. Daisy Wu (吳程玉湖), is among all, the most internationally renowned Hong Kong female photographer in the period. She was born and raised in the United States and married to Francis Wu (吳章健), the first Hong Kong members of the expatriates-dominated Photographic Society of Hong Kong and a fellow commercial portrait photographer.In 1954, she won the first prize of Popular Photography magazine photo contests and was invited on a seminar tour across the US. She had her first solo exhibition in Hong Kong in 1956.
© Chinese Beauties by Daisy Wu and Francis Wu
© Chinese Beauties by Daisy Wu and Francis Wu
Dr. Edwin Lai, an expert on history of Hong Kong photography, was puzzled by the lack of female photographers in the sixties and seventies. Despite that the photography community are mainly male, Lai did not observe any intentional exclusion of female photographers. In fact, female enthusiasts often participated in shooting sessions organised by the clubs. Lai quoted the article ‘Why have there been no great women artists’ by art historian Linda Nochlin to explain the phenomenon. Just as in Western society, women’s role as caretakers are confined their lives to family in Hong Kong. Sylvia Ng, another speaker of the seminar and the ex-chief editor of Photo Pictorial agreed. As a female photographer in the seventies, she put families before everything. On top of that, photography was not as affordable as it is nowadays thus women, who rarely earned much at the time, had no chances to enter photography.
The exhibition also opens up a discourse on salon photography. Hong Kong salon photography started in about 1920s. The Photographic Society of Hong Kong, the first of its kind in Hong Kong, was founded in 1937. It was a expatriates-dominated organization which members participant in international photo salon. The trend could be traced back to 19th century pictorialism movement when photographers began to run photography club and entered international photo salon competition, in the hopes of establishing photography as fine art. As salon grew in popularity, the term ‘salon photography’ gradually took over ‘pictorialism’ to connote photography that seeks formality, eye-catching aesthetic and exuberant composition.
© Nancy Sheung
The fifties and sixties were the golden age of salon photography in Hong Kong. In fact, Hong Kong was once ‘the asian epicentre of photography’. Photographers of the period were productive and competitive. They shot regularly, printed out their work to take part in monthly competition at photography clubs and sent their work our to compete in international salons. The 25 photos of Nancy Sheung shown in this exhibition were made with an ambition to win prizes, the formalism, studio lighting and deliberate darkroom techniques come as no surprise. This genre of photography along with pure historical archival prints dominated Hong Kong photography.
© Nancy Sheung’s edit of the same photograph
In the 4th and last issue of the photo magazine Klack, Ki Wong discussed the change of salon photography since 1970s. From the school girls awkwardly posed ‘pretty studio salon photos’ of the seventies to the amateur group shooting of young female models of the noughties . In recent years, the term ‘Lung Yau’(龍友), or salon enthusiasts, increases in prevalence. ‘Lung Yau’ describes photo amateurs whose main photographic interest lies on young women, flowers, bird or other traditionally pictorial photo subjects. Some of them invest heavily on latest photo equipment. The term often has a negative connotation and has affected general public’s impression of a photographer. The influence of salon photography is eminent throughout the history of Hong Kong. In my opinion, it has shifted the definition and aesthetic of photography in Hong Kong, cultivating a very narrow audience and an outdated view of photography from the rest of the world.
© Nancy Sheung, Gaze, 1960s. Silver gelatin print, Courtesy of Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres and the Pong Family
© Nancy Sheung, The Long Haired Girl, 1960s. Silver gelatin print, Courtesy of Tiffany Wai-Ying Beres and the Pong Family
Nancy Sheung’s strong personality and determination are the reasons that she made it to the photography scene. Ms. Beres, Nancy’s granddaughter who contacted Dr. Lai to curate her work, said that Sheung would often use extreme measures to get a photograph. If she wanted to shoot inside at a stranger’s apartment, she would bang on the door and talked until the stranger succumbed. The diabetic photographer passed away in her darkroom in 1979.
Ms. Beres is communicating with other interested parties such as Hong Kong Heritage Museum for a bigger solo exhibition. We can expect more exhibitions and even a photo book of Nancy Sheung in the near future.
Installation view of ‘Rare Encounters: Nancy Sheung’s Portraits of Hong Kong Women in the 1960s’ at Lumenvisum
“Rare Encounters: Nancy Sheung’s Portraits of Hong Kong Women in the 1960s”* is the first major exhibition of Nancy Sheung’s work in Hong Kong since her death in 1979. The 25 images in the exhibition presents an intimate glance at her photographic work with women of the period, photos with a highly distinctive sensibility for capturing drama, beauty, and the female spirit. The exhibition began on 7th March till 12th April at Lumenvisum.