Photos of the real China: the rise and rise of photographer Chen Ronghui
- Chen Ronghui has won numerous plaudits, awards and fans by training his lens on industrial and offbeat scenes in China, and never shying away from challenges
Chinese photographer Chen Ronghui’s rise to international acclaim over the past decade has been exponential. Born in Zhaoxu village, on the outskirts of Lishui, in 1989, he witnessed China’s fast-developing love affair with landscape photography, when Zhejiang province started attracting photographers from big cities such as Shanghai to shoot the bucolic mountain scenery.
He became aware of art photography while in high school in Lishui, as the Lishui Photography Festival, a biennale founded in 2005, began attracting photographers from across the nation and overseas.
After graduating with a BA in journalism from Nanchang University in 2011, Chen moved to Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, and cut his teeth as a photojournalist with a community newspaper.
Four years later, he shot to international fame when his photograph of a factory worker making Christmas decorations in Yiwu, a small industrial city on the banks of the mighty Yangtze River, won him second prize in the World Press Photo awards’ Contemporary Issues category.
Other awards have followed, including the Hou Dengke Documentary Photography Award (2017), the Three Shadows Photography Award & ALPA special prize (2018) and the BarTur Photo Award (2020).
In 2019, Chen enrolled in Yale University’s master of fine arts (MFA) programme. He returned to Hangzhou this January after graduating.
