How one of China’s best photography festivals suffered a slow, painful demise
- Lianzhou Foto was halted by the pandemic but cracks had begun to show years earlier as authorities increasingly removed exhibits, reining in self-expression
Following a chance encounter between a small-town mayor named Lin Wenzhao and an equally ambitious photo editor called Duan Yuting in 2004, the idea for a contemporary photography festival in an obscure mountain town between the southern Chinese provinces of Guangdong and Hunan was born.
It was not long before the Lianzhou International Photo Festival entered the photography world’s lexicon, often uttered in the same breath as Les Rencontres D’Arles, a similarly experimental photography festival held annually in southern France.
Later rebranded Lianzhou Foto, from 2005 until 2019, the event grew year on year in prestige, scope and quality.
In 2017, the Lianzhou Museum of Photography was inaugurated, supplanting the Candy Factory, a disused sugar mill the festival organisers had previously used to exhibit artwork. The landmark building cemented Lianzhou’s status as a “City of Photography in China”, as the government, keen to promote Lianzhou as a tourist destination, branded it.
But ideological cracks were beginning to show, and just before the 2017 “Your Selfie Stick (and You)” edition kicked off, several exhibitions were cancelled at the last minute by state censors.
In north China, the Beijing Literature Festival, which had attracted scrutiny in 2016, cancelled its 2017 edition, while the Strawberry Music Festival was axed just two weeks before it was supposed to have been held in Grand Epoch City, in Hebei province.
