My earliest memory of photography is of shooting pictures in the countryside when I was young. Later on, I didn’t really go through any professional training; I mainly learnt by reading about the subject and practicing.
I started out as a freelance photographer, trying to find interesting things in my life to photograph, and then sending the pictures to local media.
My first assignment was in 2002, documenting the lives of a group of miners employed in a quarry. They did this high-risk job while hanging from ropes suspended from a cliff, and I photographed their lives both during and after work and then wrote a story to accompany the pictures. I was lucky to have such a good subject to work on for my first assignment.
Working on that story about the miners gave me some experience of all the common challenges in photojournalism: how to work with strong backlight and fast movements, how to tell a story, and how to gather information properly.
The assignment that left the biggest mark on me was about a man who was taken hostage in Liu’an on June 21, 2004. I saw the hostage taker being shot to death by police, but I didn’t manage to capture the moment on camera because of a technical difficulty. I realised that mastering practical shooting skills is just as important as having a quick and bright mind.
I most enjoy photographing humanitarian subjects. But I’m also always ready to jump in and shoot an important breaking news subject.
The Chinese photographer Hou Dengke is someone I admire a lot. As for foreign photographers, I really like the work of Marc Riboud, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Sebastiao Salgado, because their photos reveal truths about life, and make it beautiful and timeless.
