The master of street photography is Ho Fan. Ho Fan - Hong Kong classic of world photography Ho Fan photography

There are not many photographers who are equally highly regarded at home and in the world, by their contemporaries and later followers. This undoubtedly includes the Hong Kong master, Ho Fan. Having become famous as a photographer, he achieved significant results in filmmaking, acting as an actor, cameraman, producer and director in feature films. Despite the fact that Fan belongs to the classical representatives of the Asian direction in art - laconic, with verified proportions and carefully constructed composition, he managed to expand, adapt it to the eyes of the Western audience. The photographer is widely known all over the world, and has been consistently popular since his early days.

Ho Fan never studied photography, he mastered the profession on his own and reached incredible heights. In 2012, Ho Fan was recognized as the most influential Asian master of photography by the Invisible Photographer International. This is one of the most famous representatives of the Chinese nation on the planet, its pride and heritage.

Art is eternal - unfortunately, this cannot be said about those who create it. An internationally recognized photographer, the author of a huge number of workshops and spectacular photographs, he recently passed away, leaving a significant creative legacy. Ho Fan was born in China, he lived his last years in San Jose, California, where he died of pneumonia at the age of 79 on June 16, 2016.

He was made a member of all the prominent photographic societies - American, Royal in Britain, German, French, Italian and many others. Personal exhibitions Ho Fan was held in different countries - from Singapore to Brazil. He has published several books and won nearly 300 world awards. As a visiting professor, Ho Fan taught a course in the art of film and photography at 12 universities - mainly in Taiwan and Hong Kong, where he flew from California almost before last days... One of the books is entirely devoted to the prints of his many awards - and it is quite voluminous.

Ho Fan as an extraordinary master of pictorialism and documentary art

The photographer's style took shape early. Ho Fan was heavily influenced by traditional trends, but quickly distinguished his own, original and unlike anything else. It, in turn, influenced many other representatives of the photo genre. Ho Fan was a born documentary filmmaker, he was extremely organic in reportage shooting, he knew how to highlight the truly artistic moments of the everyday life that surrounded him. The master, in his own words, loved to work on uncrowded streets, which were far from the turbulent central districts. There he found his models, building a "frame" around them from the surrounding landscape.

One of the famous New York gallerists, Lawrence Miller, seeing early works Ho Fan, wondered how it was possible in Hong Kong of the 50s of the twentieth century to create works that are so close to the Bauhaus school. Abstract-geometric and filled with true humanism at the same time, they stand out from the crowd and impress.

The genre closest to the photographer has always been pictorialism - the ability to use laconic shades, masterful work with backlighting, an amazing sense of composition make Ho Fan's photographs relevant today. By graphically juxtaposing parts of the picture and embedding them in perspective, experimenting with camera angles, he achieved depth in the pictures.

With light, the photographer created a special atmosphere in the frame. Using these tools, he told stories about people lost in a huge city or bamboo forests. Although Fan's works are not staged, they show an intuitive mathematical calculation - this is the talent of the photographer, his special, documentary look through the camera.


The author worked a lot in the genre of "full meter". This is not surprising - after all, Fan's father was a professional director. Ho's films at various times participated in the Kansk and Berlin festivals, received awards in the English Bunberry, Japan, and San Francisco. Five of them are from the National Taiwan and Hong Kong Film Archives Collection.

And, although in 1969, Ho Fan stopped acting as an actor, breaking the contract with the studio, directing, along with photography, he was engaged until the end of the 90s. In total, he took part in almost 30 films, mainly in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where he constantly flew to direct the process.

Ho Fan is one of the founders of Asian erotic cinema aesthetics, he worked a lot in short documentary filmmaking, transferring this experience to photography.

Hong Kong-China period and later works

The photographer was born on October 8, 1937. Shanghai, where his family then lived, was replaced by Hong Kong a few years later, where the boy grew up and became famous for his photographs from the age of 19. There he took part in exhibitions and international competitions... His hobby began in childhood. Suffering from migraines, Ho Fan often walked the streets of the city, and, in order not to get bored, filmed everything that caught his eye with a Rolleiflex camera. His father gave it to him when the boy was 13 years old. The film had to be developed right in the home bathroom.

The heroes of the photo were slum dwellers, port and market workers, and ordinary street dwellers. Fan filmed them without warning, for which he repeatedly got into dangerous situations - once he almost fell victim to an attack by a local butcher, who believed that the camera could take the soul of the person being photographed. A patient young man could wait for hours for a colorful character to appear on his favorite street.

Many photographs of the dramatically changing Hong Kong of the 1950s and 1960s were included in Fan's latest book, The Living Theater. The play of light and shadows, exotic landscapes, laconic black and white gamma and sepia made the works exquisite, and the fixation of the transformation of the city into a metropolis - interesting and exciting.


In 2010, previously unpublished negatives from this period again attracted the attention of the photographer, and he revised them. By combining the shots, Fan was able to create whimsical and unusual compositions, which he digitized. The works were printed in a limited edition (20 copies 22x20) on matte paper and are now of considerable collection value.


After moving to America (or rather, becoming a resident of two countries at the same time), Ho Fan focused on photography and directing, began to generously share his knowledge with students of the faculties of arts and film production. He constantly took part in new projects - his last lifetime work concerned the organization of a modern California gallery.

His prints are highly sought after at auctions, especially vintage, gelatin-silver prints - they go up to $ 10,000 per copy.


On average, signed by the author, the original photograph is sold for one to five thousand - but, of course, the artistic side of Fan's work is much more important than the material. His creative style is unique - lyricism, soft beauty are combined with drama and minimalism. Ho Fan is a one-of-a-kind master who influenced the entire world of photography and became a creator deservedly recognized by the entire international community.

Ho Fan Is a legendary Hong Kong and Taiwanese photographer. The brightest representative of a talented person in everything. Ho Fan is a film director, film actor, producer and screenwriter. He has been interested in photography as a hobby since childhood... For many years Hong Kong has been "remembered" with photographic film. So ambiguous, rich, bright, different. Ho Fan is considered one of the most recognized and distinguished photographers in China. They call him "Master street photography».

Ho Fan was born in Shanghai in 1937. By the age of 19 - he is already highly regarded, taking part in a huge number of exhibitions and competitions around the world. On his account, already in this early age over 280 international awards... Ho Fan is self-taught. He is a documentary filmmaker by vocation. Ho Fan's heroes are urban everyday life, alleys, slums, markets, ports and embankments.

Ho Fan's works are the clearest example of how the photographer's documentary gaze refracts the photographic image and makes it cinematic. Huo Fan is a master of color and light. The light in his works is not so much a method of illumination as a method of creating an atmosphere. His compositions are simple, clean, and at the same time - modern and relevant. They combine a keen sense of graphical juxtaposition, depth and perspective. Each individual photo is a cinematic story of wasted time. About the life we ​​are losing.

Hong Kong of the 50s - 60s is a city of a turning point in time. The streets of Hong Kong combine past and future: a man pushing a handcart in the background railroad, silhouettes of construction workers on the background of bamboo forests. This is the time of building a new life against the backdrop of a passing world. Ho Fan himself calls the street a "live theater". These streets are filled with hope and dreams for a better one modern life, on the one hand, and longing and nostalgia for what happened before, on the other. Yi Ho Fan documented, honestly, intimately and clearly tells us with his photographs this not a simple story of life. big city and a little man.

Master of Street Photography - Ho Fan


Since 1956, Fan Ho has won 280 awards from international exhibitions and competitions around the world. He was elected a Fellow of the Photographic Society of America, the Royal Photographic Society and the Royal Society of Arts of Great Britain, and he is an honorary member of the photographic societies of Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Brazil, Argentina, Singapore and other countries. His work has been published in many international photographic annuals around the world.

Phan Ho was invited to 12 universities in Taiwan and Hong Kong as a visiting professor and taught the course "The Art of Film and Photography". He has written five books, one of which contains all of his award-winning work, and is currently in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco. His last book is called "Living Theater".

Fan Ho then became an accomplished and renowned Hong Kong filmmaker. He won Best Picture at the Banbury International Film Festival in England.

Three of his films have been officially selected for international film festivals in Cannes, Berlin and San Francisco, and five of his films have been included in the permanent collection of the National Film Archives of Taiwan and Hong Kong. Fan Ho was also selected as a judge from Taiwan at the Golden Horse Film Festival, winning an Oscar in Hong Kong.

It is this diverse cultural background that makes his creative style so unique, full of lyrical beauty, dramatic power and poetic greatness. Fan Ho currently lives in California and Hong Kong, working on projects for a contemporary gallery.

The cost of his photographs ranges from $ 2,000 to $ 10,000, depending on the size and circulation. Modern 11 × 14 photographs from the original negative, printed under the supervision of the author in the amount of 25 copies and signed by him, are estimated at $ 950–5,000 and more.

In 2010, Fan Ho revised his Hong Kong negatives, which were never printed. When looking at two negatives together, the photographer usually sees a new composition.

Once he created a picture in this way, which pleased him very much, and immediately digitized it. These new works, 22x28 in size, were printed on matte paper in an edition of 20 copies.

In 2012, Fan Ho was recognized as one of the most influential Asian photographers. In 2014, he received the 2nd World China International Photography Award.

Born in Shanghai to a film director in 1931, he moved with his family to Hong Kong early. Photographing became a hobby of Ho Fan as a child, and continued into his youth, when he captured Hong Kong in the process of rebuilding it from a small city to a metropolis state.

Fan Ho had no teachers; books and competitions became his teachers. According to him, it was the competition that helped him determine the quality of his photographs. Professional photographer Fan is not, in the sense that he hasn't pressed the camera button in years trying to feed his family. He just shoots well and does it better than most professionals.

Today Fan Ho is a well-known filmmaker in Hong Kong (11 films and 15 starred himself) and his cinematography is clearly expressed in his photographs.

At the beginning of his career, Fan Ho was looking for his own style, imitating famous masters. He also works in the spirit of "Chinese pictorialism" and creates a whole series of wonderful landscapes. At the same time, living in a huge metropolis, he captures the life of this city, using techniques developed for shooting a landscape and, long before photography, created in painting.

Its strict mathematically verified proportions are combined with the active dynamics of life. He has a very developed sense of not only two-dimensional, but also spatial composition. In my opinion, it is unique to street or reportage photography, uses light to enhance volume and dynamics. He often retains the same three landscape perspectives in his urban photographs. Only a few work in this style, and many modern Western (from China) photo schools are either not familiar or do not want to get involved with it.

His work with light is amazingly beautiful and is associated, first of all, with Chiaroscuro, the art of chiaroscuro, which was owned by such painters as Rubens and Rembrandt, and Caravaggio brought it to complete drama in the form of tenebrism. The ability to elegantly work with penumbra, reflexes and highlights, together with the craving for backlight in the hands of Fan Ho, turns ordinary photography into an object of art.

Ho Fan currently lives in San Jose, California.

 

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