About Ye
Born in Zhejiang Province in 1979, Ye is an independent photographer in China. He started teaching himself photography while in high school, and is now a member of the Chinese Fine Art Photography Association. Working with a digital medium format camera, Ye focuses on Eastern style landscape photography. He has exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, and has won the Chinese Academy of Photography award, the highest award in the Chinese fine art photography field.
Awards/Recognition
-
Member of Fine Art Photography Committee of the Chinese Photographer’s Association
-
Golden Statue Award, 12th Chinese Photography, 2021
-
Golden Award, 26th Chinese Photographic Art Exhibition
-
Golden Award, 56th Chinese Photographic Art Exhibition
-
Best Photographer Award, Pingyao International Photo Festival, 2018
-
Best Artist Award, Lishui International Photo Festival, 2017
-
Best Emerging Photographer, Lishui International Photography Festival
Solo Exhibition
-
2022 Empty Mountain, Speedy Gallery, Los Angeles
-
2021 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes, Wenzhou
-
2020 The Fascination of a River, Beijing World Art Museum
-
2020 Ye Wenlong: Works, Photo LA
-
2019 Winter Snow, Dali Photo Festival
-
2019 Dragon Springs in Clouds, Zhejiang Art Museum
-
2018 Ye Wenlong: Chinese Landscape, Festival Fotografico Europeo, Italy
-
2018 Ye Wenlong: Chinese Landscape, Zhejiang Art Museum
-
2017 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes， Taizhou
-
2017 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes, Arles Photo Festival
-
2017 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes & The Poems of Mountain and Water, Zhejiang University, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics
-
2016 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes ，Chinese Photographer’s Association Gallery, Beijing
-
2016 Rain in Mind Mountains in Eyes, Chang’an International Photography Week, Dongguan
Group Exhibition
-
2023 LA Art Show
-
2022 Milan Image Art Fair
-
2021 Winter Snow, Galerie XII, Paris
-
2019 Ye Wenlong: Works, Foto Fever, Paris
-
2018 The Poems of Mountain and Water, The 40th Year Anniversary of Chinese Landscape Photography Exhibition
-
2018 The Poems of Mountain and Water, Chengdu Contemporary Landscape Photography Exhibition
-
2014 Once Having Seen the Best Ocean, Zhejiang Art Museum
Ye Wenlong was born in the Zhangjiang Province in 1979 and has been passionate about photography since he was in high school. He is a member of the Chinese Fine Art Photography Association and a winner of the Chinese Academy of Photography award, the highest honor in the Chinese fine art photography field. His work has been exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide including in Arles, France, Los Angeles, CA and at the Italy Europe International Photography Festival, Pingyao International Photography Festival, Lishui International Photography Festival and the Dali International Photography Festival.
Ye's photographs are inspired by traditional Chinese landscape painting, as well as by Eastern-style landscape photography. His black-and-white images are shot in nature during the winter months. While his focus is trees and their surroundings, it is the integration of the winter snow that adds a layer of abstraction to the works. In his images, he takes advantage of the camera's ability to flatten the picture plane into areas that become negative and positive spaces, turning the physical world into a blend of abstraction and representation.
Past series framed mountains and rivers. As Ye states, "Mountains and rivers have always been a part of my bloodline. My body carries the wildness of the mountains and the romance of the waters." Many of the atmospheric images in his panoramic formatted series, A Poem of Mountains and Water are horizontal, extending across the horizon to create a sense of disorientation as sky and sea join forces to surround trees, rocks and mountains. In the vertical pictures, Ye creates a slice of the landscape rather than an expansive view. For the Taoism in Nature series, Ye looks more closely at details, be it a single branch protruding from a rock or the glowing moon in the night sky. In these works, elements in the landscape are combined to create massive black forms silhouetted against gray toned skies.
For Ye, the photographs in Winter Snow explore the relationship between nature and the inner self. These contemplative images transform the frenetic storms into moments of stillness and silence where the air is filled with drifting snowflakes, depicted as irregular white circles of varying transparency that cover the image like a screen or a veil. Rather than focus on the nuances of the individual flakes, Ye treats the presence of snow as an anomaly similar to flashes of light that both illuminate and distort the scene. While in some images, the landscape is subsumed by the snow, evoking bitter cold and bleakness, in others the snow dances across the composition, as if a spirit from another world.
Ye's photographs have affinities with abstracted landscapes by the American photographers Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind and Minor White while also drawing parallels with the more traditional landscapes by Paul Caponigro and Ansel Adams. The photographs recall images by the conceptual based artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, specifically his Seascapes series where the image is divided in half and presented as an abstraction, and the Lightning Fields series where Sugimoto captured electrical discharges on photographic plates.
While grounded in what is observed, Ye's evocative and meditative images portray the natural world as a continuum that allows the eye as well as the mind to travel from earth to sky and engage with a spiritual as well as metaphoric realm. Ye's images invite viewers to get lost in the swirls of snow and to imagine floating in the forest like a snowflake that weaves through darkness and light.
About the Art Critic
Jody Zellen (born 1961, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American artist and writer. Her practice, consisting of digital art, painting, video art and drawing, has been showcased by way of interactive installations, public art, and curated exhibitions. She is also known for her art criticism. Her writings have appeared in local, national and international publications including: Afterimage, Art + Text, Art in America, Art Nexus, Art US, and Arts. She currently contributes reviews to Artillery Magazine, Art Now Los Angeles, Visual Arts Source and What's on Los Angeles.