Wen/Fu Zengkai
The idea of shooting ordinary people has a long history. After I took a group of photos for my father, I had the idea of taking ordinary people. In 2015, he took to the streets to look for inspiration, observed all walks of life and all kinds of people, and also took pictures of some workers. When he went back to print it out, he found that some people were very expressive and had a sense of fashion, which made him more firm in the idea of shooting fashion blockbusters for workers. In the following years, I tried to put this idea into practice several times, but I had to put it aside again and again because my work was too full. Until the Spring Festival this year, I talked with several friends, and everyone supported me to put this idea into practice. With the encouragement of Chen Xiaobo, the senior editor of Xinhua News Agency, I made up my mind to shoot it.
So I started to publish messages on Weibo and WeChat, asking friends to introduce my subjects, and even went to the street to "catch" people to shoot. Although I shoot for pure public interest and don't charge a penny, I am still misunderstood. Not everyone is willing to accept the shooting. For example, we found sanitation workers on the street, but they didn't trust me. They always wondered what the photographer was doing and were afraid of having a negative impact on their work, so they didn't succeed.
I have also had some experience shooting ordinary people, and we basically have one thing in common, that is, we are worried about not being fashionable enough. Therefore, I chose ordinary workers in various industries to create fashionable makeup and modeling for stars according to the process of shooting fashion blockbusters for them, so that they can see the contrast before and after shooting, and see different themselves. I hope that through them and this group of works, more ordinary people can find their beauty and become more confident.
Shooting ordinary people is actually more difficult than expected. On the one hand, ordinary people pose great challenges to makeup artists and stylists. In the stage of making up and modeling planning, we repeatedly discussed and tried to make changes as comprehensive as possible, but unfortunately, there will still be many unexpected situations on the scene. When filming Uncle Bao, everyone on the scene laughed because he had a big stomach and could not fasten his buttons.
On the other hand, ordinary people don't have much shooting experience. I spent a lot of time with the team to communicate and guide. Many times, the models will be stiff in expression and movement because of nervousness. How nervous are they? As an example, Mr. Yu Guiqing, who was eloquent when giving lessons to students, stumbled when he arrived at the shooting scene. Someone on the scene summarized that the most common word I said was "Don't be nervous", and the second word was "Relax".
What impressed me most was that when shooting the work of the models, I took my team over 2000 kilometers to Liaoning, Shandong and Hebei to pursue the truth as much as possible and restore their working state to the greatest extent. I'm really glad that I went to their work place, where I could see another state of them and have a new understanding of their career. For example, shooting farmers, I really didn't expect that modern farmers have such a wide range of knowledge. They have a lot of technical and theoretical knowledge. He is very proud to share the results with us, really taught us a lesson, and let us increase a lot of knowledge.
When I went to the Second Primary School in Kazuo County, Liaoning Province to take pictures of my teacher, I and my team mates found the feeling of childhood in the sound of children reading. When I left, I took a group photo of the children in Yu's class, hoping to fix their childhood friendship.
The most difficult thing is to take work photos of nurses. In order not to interfere with their normal work, I waited outside her nurse station for a long time and kept silent watching her work. From morning to night, she hardly stopped to check the room, dispense medicine, change dressing, nurse, and check the patient information. It was really very hard.
To my great satisfaction, almost every model has changed their state after seeing their own film. I can feel that they are more confident from their speaking state. This made me more determined to continue the creation of this series, let more ordinary people from more industries participate in it, find their own beauty, and find a more confident life. I also hope to use this result to respond to the doubts of some friends before: they think that it is not meaningful for me to shoot such works at my own expense.
At the end, I would like to sincerely thank every teacher and friend who helped me during the shooting process. It was your help that made this group of works come into being successfully. Thanks to stylist Zixuan Liu and makeup artist Yue Wu, because of your professionalism, I can focus more freely on shooting myself. Thanks to the eight models who participated in the shooting. They believed in me and cooperated very well. I would also like to thank my brothers in the studio, who have done their work well and put every detail in place. Finally, I would like to thank every worker for building this society with their own hands. I wish you a happy Labor Day.
