75 photos
20th-Century Photography Master Richard Yee -->More
Landscapes have been always the Muse for Chinese painters and photographers. RICHARD YEE has abandoned himself to nature for more than half a century and is one of the earliest Chinese photographers who detach themselves from salon photography. A loyal lover of black and white, RICHARD YEE unfolds in front of us the beauty of nature and his mind and demonstrates how hard the old-generation overseas Chinese photographers explored the art. Chinese American Mr. RICHARD YEE was a champion of traditional Chinese aesthetics in the mid- and late 20th century in the mainstream of Western art circles. In 1948, while a junior high school student in Guangzhou, Mr. RICHARD YEE took a photograph of a fish-catching scene using a 120 film camera which he borrowed from his cousin. When he had the film developed at Futu Photographic Studio, the photograph was thought highly of by the owner of the studio and well-known Chinese photographer, Wu Qianli, who then enlarged it to 11×14 inches and put it into his showcase. It was the exhibition of his photograph that started Mr. RICHARD YEE's career as a photographer. Though a contemporary of famed photographers Chen Fuli and Jian Qingfu, Mr. RICHARD YEE was different from the photographers who were active at the time in Hong Kong, in that he assimilated the photographic techniques of American landscape photographer Ansel Adams into his expression of traditional Oriental aesthetics. With a plain and unadorned lens language, an poetic air of image, and a feeling of distantness both in time and space, his photographic works are reminiscent of the vigorous and elegant style of Adams, and are more of a strong color of Oriental philosophy. Mr. RICHARD YEE was one of the Eastern photographers recognized in the mainstream of American photographic circles, and the one who stayed ahead of times among Chinese photographers contemporary with him. And of course, living in a foreign land, he might be the loneliest Chinese photographer of that age. “I need not have the moon for a reflection in the icy pond; I smelled a fragrance on the snow-clad bank without seeing any flower.” This is a line taken from a poem on plum blossom by Dai Fugu, a noted poet of the Southern Song dynasty, using plum blossom as a metaphor for those men of virtue who live a secluded life and seek no fame. Using “Smelling fragrance on the snow-clad bank” to describe Mr. RICHARD YEE's career as a photographer perhaps cannot be more suitable. When the tide of color photography swept through Chinese photographers both at home and abroad in the early 1980s, Mr. RICHARD YEE didn't go with the tide but instead continued to his black-and-white photography, and by keeping exploring realism and abstractionism, he reached a new high in his career as a blue-and-white photographer. When talking of art, Lin Yutang said, “The most meaningful part of a work of art is just the character of it outside of the techniques used.” Mr. RICHARD YEE's works are more about presenting the charm of the Orient. The philosophical thought in traditional Chinese culture of “the unity of man and nature” is the cultural gene that lies deep inside his life as an artist, and also the theoretical foundation for the distinctive character of his works. Zhuangzi said, “Heaven, Earth, and I were produced together, and all things and I are one.” The world is a harmonious unity of Heaven, Earth, and man that is part of nature. In terms of relations between the depth of field, foreground and background and the positions of the horizon and levels, Mr. RICHARD YEE's landscape photographs more often than not make it hard for the viewer to tell the positions in which he took them. What his works emphasize is usually not the subjects that were photographed, but the feelings of the photographer when taking photographs. Using Adams's Zone System technique, the scenes through Mr. RICHARD YEE's lenses don't appear prominent between the heavens and the earth but blend into surroundings. Through this blending, the photographer's personal feelings come to the state of “oneness with the subject”. Such photographic works expressive of inner feelings have been more and more recognized by specialized organizations. From 1985 through 1998, Mr. RICHARD YEE held solo exhibitions at Addison Gallery of American Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Mariner's Museum, and Seattle Art Museum, with many of his works becoming part of these museums' permanent collections.
