Photos taken from the same angle in 1984 and 2018 

Grand "Hand-waving Dance"

Photo by Wu Yan reflects Youyang’s customs.

CHONGQING (CQNEWS) -- “My father’s photos are old while mine is new. The contrast between them shows the changes of Youyang.”

A father and son in Youyang are called as “shooter” by local people friendly. The 82-year-old father is still shooting which influenced his 54-year-old son who has been shooting for 30 years. 

Phoenix Brand camera starts the journey of shooting

The father and son are closely related to shooting. The father’s name is Wu Shengyan, busy with news photography all the time. The son, Wu Yan, was influenced by his father and fell in love with shooting.

Wu Yan recalled, “There was an auto focus camera in the office, covered with dust. So I cleaned it to use.” And he said he took a group of pictures about random sewage and sent them to newspaper office which attracted much attention.

His aspiration was ignited and he bought a single lens Phoenix Brand camera after several months of pinching and scraping to start his journey of shooting.

Shooting “Hand-waving Dance” for nearly 30 years

Hand-waving Dance is a traditional dance of Tujia. For Wu Yan, Hand-waving Dance is the must-shooting as the feature of Youyang.

“I started to shoot Hand-waving Dance in the1990s and I’ve been shooting for 20 or 30 years with over 5,000 photos.” Wu Yan said that the most impressive scene was a hand-waving dance performed by 100,000 people at the same time in 2010. 

To record the developments and changes of Youyang

Youyang’s developments and changes are recorded in their photos. “My father and I would go to several places to shoot Youyang County every year and the most visited is Cuiping Mountain. We’ve insisted on shooting for 50 years in total.”

In the early of 1970s, Wu Shengyan visited around the county and found it is great for shooting from Cuiping Mountain which is on the edge of the county. “I go with my father to shoot at Cuiping Mountain every year afterwards.” Wu Yan said that changes in the past 50 years are condensed in these photos. (Translated by Mao Qiao, Fathom Language Limited)