新展预告｜幽玄之路——光社与20世纪早期摄影的艺术探索

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幽玄之路——

光社与20世纪早期摄影的艺术探索

顾问：陈申

艺术总监：卢迎华、周邓燕

策展团队：翟霖峰、朱祈桦、管陶然、那荣锟、曹立瑶

展期: 2023年12月23日-2024年4月14日

地址：北京市海淀区杏石口路50号，中间美术馆一层

“幽玄之路”展追溯100年前在北京成立的摄影社团——光社——从成立到发展、历时10余年的实践。光社是由北京大学一群受过良好教育的知识精英组成的业余摄影艺术联盟。光社的历程展现了在中国近现代转型时期，新知识阶层以摄影为媒，进行的开先河的艺术探索，以及驱动其艺术取向的思想动力。这是面对政治思想与文化双重危机的中国知识界追求新秩序的一个出色案例，是这个时期急邃且深广的文化变迁的一部分。时值光社创社百年之际，我们以光社成员的作品为核心举办“幽玄之路”展。展览中，我们也借助同一历史时期与摄影相关的多种画报刊物，以及同时代具有人文旨趣和创作取向的个体摄影师的作品，尝试勾勒出20世纪20至30年代中国摄影实践中的人文和艺术转向，以及背后的时代思潮与风貌。

1923年秋，“五四”新文化运动的激进变革思想退潮；年底，北京大学六名师生成立“艺术写真研究会”；次年，改名为光社。参与光社活动的人数最多时达到20余人。光社成员发掘摄影的复杂潜能，使摄影逐渐发展成为艺术媒介与自我表达的载体。光社的成立对艺术摄影在中国的启蒙和发展起到了重要的推动。从1924年到1930年间，每年一次的光社影展都在社会上引起巨大的反响。光社的成员多为精英知识分子，他们在各自的领域内学有所长，他们不仅善于各种摄影技术和形式的探索，更在观念上视摄影为艺术实践，提出并充分地践行画意摄影这一创作方向。光社不同时期的两位灵魂人物陈万里与刘半农，在其加入光社的后期活动重心均明显向各自的学术研究偏移，在实践上将写意摄影的视觉审美应用到作为工作用途的写实摄影中，让照片有艺术性。这一转向也让我们看到光社的知识分子与家国共命运的民族责任感。

刘半农，郊外，1927年，由陈申惠允

Liu Bannong, The Suburb, 1927. Courtesy of Chen Shen.

光社出现于中国近现代的转型时期（1895-1925）。光社成员与同时代的知识分子一样，面临着转型时代的两个语境：一是传统政治秩序解体的危机与文化基本取向脱序危机；二是传统思想的嬗变与西方文化流入的互动。史学家张灏先生指出，中国正值列强侵逼日急、内部动荡日深之际。当时最明显的政治思想危机，莫过于那自殷商以来就作为政治秩序的基石的宇宙王制（cosmological kingship）的解体。面对这种困境，中国知识界欲寻求新的政治秩序。可以想见，这新秩序的追求充满了国家存亡的焦虑以及民族受侵略的耻辱感。与政治秩序解体相伴而来的是深重的文化危机。在转型时代汹涌而入的“西学”也因此成为推动转型时代中国人的意识转变的主力。

庚子之乱后，清政府不得不实行“新政”，提倡新式教育和鼓励留学。受此推动，中国很快产生了一个接受新式教育的知识分子阶层。清末民初，大规模的留学潮兴起，成千上万的年轻人到海外寻求新知。直接到国外学习先进科学技术的留学生以各自不同的视野审视中国与西方的差距，并选择对自己触动最大的一个领域投身其中，摄影术便是其中之一。中国照相业因循守旧的封闭状况也因此得到根本改变。20世纪以前，国内尚无摄影专门学校和学科，摄影术一般只是师徒相承，有关摄影的书籍也很少。20世纪初留学潮兴起后，留学生凭借自己的兴趣和语言优势，大量涉猎外文摄影书籍、报刊，翻译介绍欧美和日本的摄影书籍。辛亥革命后，南京临时政府宣布人民享有言论、出版、集会、结社的自由，从而破除了长期束缚文化传播的政治枷锁，中国的出版业和大众传媒很快呈现出蓬勃发展的繁荣景象。新文化运动掀起的思想解放潮流，更使“民主与科学”的观念深入人心，使思想界、学术界和文艺界空前活跃，各种形式的文化团体和研究组织纷纷成立。对摄影术有一定研究的归国留学生，有的加入了当时国内知名文化组织团体，并成为其骨干成员。包括光社核心成员在内，诸多把摄影当作一个严肃爱好进行技艺钻研的早期摄影家，他们的实践和理论，在我国摄影艺术发展史上，留下了开拓者的印记。

活跃的摄影实践也推动了摄影观念的更新。在20世纪20年代，画意摄影这一观念在中国的兴起离不开光社与同时期具有艺术倾向的摄影家的推动。它也与19世纪末20世纪初，以自然主义和唯美主义为诉求的画意摄影在欧美国际摄影展的流行遥相呼应。画意摄影传播到中国的主要是以“糊”和“柔浑”为特征，在当时被称为“美术摄影”或“美术照相”。画意摄影主要用柔焦进行拍摄，用布纹纸等不同相纸洗印，有的加用漫射滤镜，放大制作采用油渲、碳印等高难度工艺，追求一种模糊朦胧的艺术表现效果，使作品看上去更像印象派绘画。对摄影进行艺术化的处理与中国传统文人绘画所追求的美学境界有异曲同工之处。对于光社的成员而言，相较记录性的写实摄影，画意即写意，从根本上来说就是“我”的性情抒发与表达，这也是此时重视个性、提倡思想自由与解放的文艺观在摄影领域中的体现。

展览题目“幽玄之路”来自刘半农在1927创作的摄影作品背书所题的“到幽玄之路”。“幽玄”这个词组源自古代中国人对异世界的想象，“幽”是“山+幺幺”的会意文字，象征着“山中若隐若现的火光”或“通往天界的绳索”，而“玄”则是从金文“幺”转换而来，指“远方若隐若现的黑赤色”，是道家哲学的核心词汇之一。二者的并列使用，出自修辞学上的“同义连文”。随着时代的推移，它开始作为表现“深奥难以解读”“神妙难以预测”“暧昧模糊不清”的事物或情感的词汇逐渐得以世俗化，且具有了价值评价的意味。这张题有“幽玄之路”的摄影画面幽暗朦胧，一条没有通往明确方向的路在远处若隐若现，意味深长。我们不妨把这张作品与题词理解为刘半农在动荡晦暗的时局中探索“具象美的理路极暗处”的文艺理想。我们也可视其为面对20世纪20年代跌宕的社会语境，身处象牙塔里的知识分子之苦闷的象征。

刘半农，到幽玄之路，1927年，原件藏于江阴市博物馆‍‍

Liu Bannong, Road to Enigma and Profundity, 1926. The original is collected by Jiangyin Museum.

我们在2023年12月下旬呈现“光社与20世纪早期摄影的艺术探索”一展。展览中首次集中呈现光社成员40余幅原作、光社创社原始文献、同时代摄影师原作20余幅，以及其他摄影文献，包括了20世纪早期欧、美、日摄影年鉴与出版物。借此，我们致敬中国早期摄影实践者的艺术追求。从他们的实践中，我们也可看到，在中国现代转型时期，知识分子从摄影实践中发展出一条联结思想与现实的路径。为了将摄影纳入艺术的范畴，早期的摄影家借鉴中国传统文人画将现实生活抽象化的方式，通过突破具体的“象”而探索无限的“道”，继而又对写真实的影像进行了审美意义的拓展，从而灵动地在其中开展充满人文精神内涵的艺术探索。

Road to Enigma and Profundity: Guangshe and the Artistic Turn of Photography in the Early 20th Century

Advisor: Chen Shen

Artistic Directors: Carol Yinghua Lu, Zhou Dengyan

Curatorial Team: Zhai Linfeng, Zhu Qihua, Rory Guan, Na Rongkun, Cao Liyao

Dates: December 23, 2023-April 14, 2024

Venue: 1F Inside-Out Art Museum, No.50 Xingshikou Road, Haidian District, Beijing

This exhibition traces the decade-long practice of the photography society Guangshe (1923–1934). Founded in Beijing a hundred years ago, Guangshe was an art society formed by a group of educated amateur photographers from Peking University. The society’s history demonstrates the pioneering artistic explorations of the new intellectual class using photography as a medium and the ideological impetus that drove their artistic orientation during the transition period in modern Chinese history. Part of the rapid and profound cultural changes of this period, it is a remarkable case study of Chinese intellectuals’ search for a new order in the face of a double crisis. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the founding of Guangshe, we organized the exhibition Road to Enigma and Profundity, revolving around works by Guangshe members. In the exhibition, we also make use of a variety of contemporary pictorial publications related to photography, as well as the works of individual photographers who followed their interests in the humanities or other personal preferences, in an attempt to outline the humanistic and artistic shifts in photography practice in China during the 1920s and 1930s, as well as the bigger picture behind them.

陈万里，大风起兮，采自《大风集》，1924年，由王诗戈惠允

Chen Wanli, The Great Wind Rises, Dafeng Ji (The Great Wind Collection), 1924. Courtesy of Wang Shige.

In autumn 1923, as the May Fourth Movement's radicalism waned, Peking University saw the birth of the Art Photography Research Association.In the following year, it was renamed Guangshe, literally "the society of light." At its peak, the society had more than twenty members. They explored complex potentials of photography, gradually developing it into a medium of art and a vehicle for self-expression. The founding of Guangshe was an important catalyst for the introduction and development of art photography in China. Their annual exhibitions from 1924 to 1930 attracted considerable attention. The members of Guangshe were mostly intellectuals. Knowledgeable in their respective fields, they were not only good at exploring various photography techniques and forms, but conceptually they also regarded photography as an artistic endeavor, advocating and fully practicing pictorial photography. Chen Wanli and Liu Bannong, the two key figures of the society at different times, both shifted their focus to using photography as a tool for academic research in their later years; in their practice, they applied the visual aesthetics of pictorial photography to photojournalism, rendering the latter more artistic. This transition also allows us to see the responsibility that the intellectuals of Guangshe felt on their shoulders concerning the fate of the country.

Guangshe emerged during the transition period in modern Chinese history (1895-1925). Like all Chinese intellectuals at the time, Guangshe members inhabited two contexts in this era: First, the disintegration of traditional political order and the disorganization of the basic orientation of culture; second, the interaction between the transmutation of traditional thought and the influx of Western culture. Historian Zhang Hao points out that China was in the midst of internal turmoil and rapid encroachment by external powers. The most obvious political and intellectual crisis at that time was the disintegration of cosmological kingship, which had been the cornerstone of political order since the Shang dynasty. In the face of this predicament, Chinese intellectuals sought a new political order, which, naturally, teemed with anxiety about the nation’s survival and shame about invasions threatening the country. The disintegration of the political order was accompanied by a deep cultural crisis. Western knowledge, which surged into China during the transition era, thus became the main force driving the transformation of Chinese consciousness in this period.

After the Boxer Rebellion, the Qing government had to implement reform, which advocated new education systems and encouraged students to go abroad. As a result, a new class of educated intellectuals soon emerged in China. At the end of the Qing dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, studying abroad became trendy, and tens of thousands of young people went overseas. While studying advanced science and technology, they often observed the gaps between China and the West from their own perspective; attempting to fill in the gaps, they often chose to devote themselves to a field that resonated with them the most, including photography. The photography industry in China, which had been conservative and closed off, also went through fundamental changes because of their efforts. Before the 20th century, no specialized schools and disciplines in photography existed in China, where the craft was taught by masters to their apprentices and few books were written on photography. Thanks to their passions and linguistic skills, the Chinese students overseas dived into photography books and periodicals in foreign languages, translating publications on photography from Europe, North America, and Japan. After the 1911 Revolution, the Nanjing Provisional Government declared that citizens enjoyed freedom of speech, publication, assembly, and association, thus breaking the political shackles that had long been binding the dissemination of culture. China’s publishing industry and mass media soon flourished. The New Culture Movement launched the campaign to liberate the mind, inculcating "democracy and science" into people’s hearts, energizing the intellectual, academic, and literary circles to an unprecedented level, and prompting various forms of cultural groups and research organizations to be established one after another. Some of the students who had taken up photography while studying abroad joined and became core members of the better-known photography organizations at the time. Many early photography groups, including Guangshe, left pioneering marks on the history of art photography in China with their practices and theories.

光社第一次影展在北京中央公园董事会举办，1924年，郎静山旧藏，采自箫永盛《画意－集锦－郎静山》

The first exhibition of Guangshe at Dongshihui, Beijing Central Park,  1924. Image collected by Lang Jingshan, in Xiao Yongsheng, Pictorial-Composite-Lang Jinshan.

Active photography practice also propelled innovation in concepts. Pictorial photography would not have emerged in China in the 1920s without the efforts of Guangshe members and othercontemporaneous photographers with artistic tendencies. It also echoed the popularity of pictorial photography, which favored naturalism and aestheticism, in exhibitions in the West at the turn of the 20th century. Known as "fine art photography" at that time, pictorialism in China was mainly characterized by blurriness and softness. Photographers used a soft focus lens to shoot, developed and printed on textured paper, with the addition of a diffusion filter for a fuzzy effect so that the works resemble impressionist paintings more. Techniques like bromoil print and carbon print enhanced the complexity of production. The artistic treatment of photography is similar to the artistic conception pursued by traditional Chinese literati painters. For members of Guangshe, in contrast to documentary photography, pictorialism photography is fundamentally an expression of "I," which is also how the trending literary concept of individuality, freedom and liberation of thought manifested itself in the field of photography.

The title of the exhibition, Road to Enigma and Profundity, comes from the inscription that Liu Bannong wrote at the back of his photograph in 1926: 幽玄 (enigma and profundity) originates from the ancient Chinese imagination of the otherworldly. 幽, made up of 山 (mountain) and 幺幺 (flames), symbolizes flickering fires in a mountain or ropes leading to the heavenly realm. On the other hand, 玄, converted from the Chinese bronze inscription 幺, means a reddish black color that looms in the distance and stands among the core words in Taoist philosophy. The juxtaposition of the two comes from the "synonymous conjunction" in rhetoric. With the passage of time, the phrase gradually began to be secularized as a word expressing things or emotions that are "abstruse and undecipherable," "esoteric and unpredictable," and "ambiguous and vague," acquiring the meaning of value judgment. This photograph titled "Road to Enigma and Profundity" features a dark, hazy image where a path looms in the distance, leading to no particular destination. We might as well interpret this work and the inscription as Liu’s ideal of exploring "the darkest place of concrete beauty" in the turbulent and gloomy current situation. We can also regard it as a symbol of the depression of intellectuals living in the ivory tower in the face of the ups and downs of the social situation in the 1920s.

In late December, 2023, we present the exhibition Guangshe and the Artistic Turn of Photography in the Early 20th Century. For the first time, the exhibition shows more than 40 original works by members of the Guangshe, the original documents of the founding of Guangshe, more than 20 original works by their contemporaries, and other photographic documents, including European, American, and Japanese photographic almanacs and publications of the early 20th century. In this way, we pay tribute to the artistic pursuits of China's early photographic practitioners. From their practice, we can also see that during the period of China's modern transformation, intellectuals developed a path from photographic practice to connect thought and reality. In order to bring photography into the realm of art, early photographers drew on traditional Chinese literati paintings to abstract real life, exploring the infinite "Tao" by breaking through the concrete "image," and then expanding the aesthetic significance of realistic images. They then extended the aesthetic significance of the realistic images, and thus, were able to carry out artistic explorations full of humanistic connotations in a dynamic manner.

特别致谢为此次展览提供慷慨支持和指导的学者与收藏家

蔡涛、曹嘉乐、岑大维、陈申、陈伟、丁夏、顾铮、洪越、李浴洋、龙岸、陆建欢、苗天元、牛婕、裴帅、陶为衍、滕德润（雨人）、仝冰雪、王琛、王德州、王诗戈、薛世清、杨岳、余梓麒、袁一丹、张琦‍

以及其他工作人员‍‍‍‍‍‍

高玉辉、贾凤鸣、李若虹、李育红、刘飞、刘海现、刘欣玥、刘亦萱、刘玉强、王国利、晏李昕、詹为涵‍‍‍

注：名单以姓氏拼音字母顺序排列

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the following scholars and collectors, who have generously supported this exhibition:‍

Cai Tao, Cao Jiale, Cen Dawei, Chen Shen, Chen Wei, Ding Xia, Gu Zheng, Hong Yue, Li Yuyang, Lohan, Lu Jianhuan, Miao Tianyuan, Niu Jie, Pei Shuai, Tao Weiyan, Teng Derun (Rainman), Tong Bingxue, Wang Chen, Wang Dezhou, Wang Shige, Xue Shiqing, Yang Yue, Yu Ziqi, Yuan Yidan, Zhang Qi

and other colleagues:

Gao Yuhui, Jia Fengming, Li Ruohong, Li Yuhong, Liu Fei, Liu Haixian, Liu Xinyue, Liu Yixuan, Liu Yuqiang, Wang Guoli, Yan Lixin, Zhan Weihan‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

*Listed in alphabetical order‍‍

顾问 Advisor

摄影史学家，《中国摄影史1840—1937》《光社纪事》作者

Photography historian, author of History of Chinese Photography 1840-1937, Chronicle of Guangshe

艺术总监 Artistic Directors

艺术史学者、中间美术馆馆长

Art historian and director of Inside-Out Art Museum

周邓燕 Zhou Dengyan

摄影史学者，现任教于北京电影学院摄影系

Photography historian, currently teaching at the Department of Photography of Beijing Film Academy

策展团队 Curatorial Team

摄影收藏家，中国摄影史研究者

Photography collector, researcher of Chinese photography history

朱祈桦 Zhu Qihua

独立策展人

Independent curator

管陶然 Rory Guan

中间美术馆研究与展览部副主管

Associate director of Research and Curatorial Department at Beijing Inside-Out Art Museum

那荣锟 Na Rongkun

中间美术馆研究与展览部策展助理

Curatorial assistant of Inside-Out Art Museum

曹立瑶 Cao Liyao

中间美术馆研究与展览部展览助理

Exhibition assistant of Inside-Out Art Museum

翻译：席宁忆

设计：屈莹

图片版权为艺术家所有