Is photography taught in Chinese art schools as an artform?
There are a few courses but not many. I think it’s really important to have an independent college of photography, but China doesn’t have one at present. All the courses are taught by departments within broader art colleges. For example, the Chinese Academy of Fine Arts [in Beijing] has a course in photographic history and the students sometimes have classes in the Three Shadows library. Also Qinghua University [one of China’s top universities situated in Beijing] has had classes here. Something really funny—when the students visited the darkroom, they had never seen an enlarger before. Even more amazing, they had never seen 35mm film before. Most of the students were young girls in their 20s, and they used their digital cameras to take pictures of the 35mm film. I thought it was really funny. Did you feel the award entrants were very aware of the history and traditions of photography in and outside China? For example were they aware of your work in the East Village back in the early-1
