Painting on photo
-A Kind of Photographic Experience Originated in China
By Cai Meng

Early in the 1920s, the "pictorial" photography originated in China started to demonstrate the visional experience and the pioneering humanitarian features that uniquely belonged to the Chinese.
In the time when photography served as a propaganda tool for politics, the educational images that long occupied people's eyes gradually stimulated a kind of sense of visional fatigue. The fatigue had been lasting until Chen Fuli, photographer of Hong Kong, held his Photography Exhibition in National Art Museum of China. With a strong aesthetic feeling of vision and the humanitarian spirit of China, Chen's works greatly impressed the Chinese people who had been in a state of abstinency for long, and started the transformation from ideological themes to vision cultural themes. The exhibition of Chen's photographs impacted significantly the development of Chinese photography.
In 1979, Chen Fuli began to prepare the artistic creation with the method of combining photography and painting(CPP). Due to his great efforts for in the following 11 years many high-weigh masters joined the process, namely Wu Zuoren, Li Keran, Liu Haishu, Li Kuchan, Guan Shanyue, Huang Zhou, Han Meilin and Fan Zeng etc.
Chen always carefully studied the style of the each artist before providing them with the photos for CPP. Accordingly he selected the suitable photos in advance, and gave the master several copies after enlarging the photo to the size of 20*24 inch. He prepared a photo of desert landscape for Wu Zuoren to draw a camel, a photo of old tree with irregular branches for Li Kuchan to add a crow, a photo of crocodile head with cartoon features for Hua Junwu to express his sense of humor. Seeing from today, the participation into the CPP process by those masters is indeed the act of photography prepared by Chen Fuli rather than the second creation to the photography.
Seeing from his career life, Chen Fuli, who had been engaged in scenery photography for  years, formed his own characteristic in his 70's, on the basis of inheriting and concluding lessons and experience of predecessors. He, at that time, began to consider to transform. Like Qi Baishi, one of his most favorite masters of Chinese painting, Chen Fuli also changed in his old age. He directly borrowed the painting elements of his painter friends to change and upgrade his photography. Moreover, Chen enjoyed favorable conditions that he could contact with many important painters and calligraphers at that time. This kind of cooperation not only reflected his brightness and sharp feeling of art, but also reflected his great capacity of utilizing and conforming all kinds of resources. A way of photographic vision basing on traditional aesthetics and art standards decided this visage of combination of photography and painting.
Chen's combination of photography and painting was a brand new taste by a kind of pictorial and saloon photography in 1980's rather than returning to the language of traditional mainstream photography.  Photography not only changed the visional experience and the viewing way of the Chinese people after it introduction, it also has been constantly modified by the Chinese to be with a concept totally different from the western one. As Susan Sontag said, the camera changes viewing itself by breeding the concept viewing for its own sake.