Convention Before Shooting

The relationship between literati and art is one of the basic propositions in the study of Chinese art history.The study of literati in the field of traditional art history focuses on poetry,calligraphy,painting and seals,while photography was introduced to China at the end of the 19 th century,and the literati group naturally came into contact with this new medium.Liu Bannong is one of the representative literati who got involved in photography in the early stage.Not only that,but his position in the history of Chinese photography is also very important,and he is an unavoidable research object for scholars to discuss the history of modern photography.Liu Bannong’s lifetime exposure to photography spanned the late Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China,and he possessed both Chinese and Western perspectives.It provides an excellent case perspective for us to investigate the relationship between the new literati in the Republic of China and early Chinese photography.In the past,scholars who studied Bannong’s photography mostly paid more attention to some materials directly related to Bannong’s photography.However,artists are human beings,complex and alive.Therefore,the study of Bannong’s photography must return to Liu Bannong’s identity as a literati,and understand Liu Bannong’s photography view from literature and other sister arts that show the connotation of literati.This article focuses on Liu Bannong’s photography career,combined with his learning,friendship and practical experience of poetry,calligraphy,painting and photography,comprehensively investigates Liu Bannong’s photography concept and work practice from an interdisciplinary perspective and assists new historical materials,and analyzes its causes.It is hoped that through a more objective and threedimensional historical restoration,the significance of its views can be re-established within the scope of Chinese photography history.The introduction of the first chapter of the thesis guides the whole article and points out the problems that this article needs to solve.The second chapter “Liu Bannong’s Photography Career” is the cornerstone of the full-text research.Through a large number of literature research and longitudinal combing,it outlines Liu Bannong’s life’s photography experience in detail.Among them,the author pays special attention to Liu Bannong’s experience of studying photography in his early years and his "turning" to photography in his later years,which makes up for some gaps in the research field of the academic circle.The third chapter “Liu Bannong’s photography view”is one of the main subjects of this article.On the basis of combing and explaining Liu Bannong’s main photography views and practical characteristics,he refines the core of his photography view and analyzes its theoretical significance.The fourth chapter returns the field of vision to Liu Bannong’s literati identity.This chapter makes a comprehensive analysis of the reasons for the formation of Bannong’s photography view from three dimensions: sister arts such as calligraphy and painting literature,the view of literary appreciation including the Western perspective,and the influence of friends and the times.Through the research,the author believes that “Bannong Tanying”—as the first theoretical work on photography art in China and the culmination of Liu Bannong’s photography views—is a new cultural movement in the field of photography initiated by Liu Bannong.Its fundamental purpose is still about the emancipation of people’s minds,which was of great pioneering significance in the Chinese photography field at that time.He not only advocates the artistic function of photography for pleasure and emotion;at the same time,he also attaches importance to the applicability of photography as an aid to scientific work and research.The core of Liu Bannong’s photography art practice and thinking is the "human being" as the creator,which is consistent with the values that Chinese literati artists of all ages attached to the creative subject "I".The root cause of this influence is literature.It can be said that it is Liu Bannong’s identity as a literati that created his photography concept.