Mike Yamashita: Chinese photographers' works are too fake

With gray curly hair and a slightly plump figure, the famous photographer Mike Yamashita sat there - the staff of Beijing De Tao Education Institution all called him Master. As one of the 50 masters initiated by De Tao, Yamashita has already accepted the professor appointment letter issued by Shanghai Academy of Visual Arts, Fudan University, and visited and inspected his studio located in De Tao Shanghai Creative Industry Cluster with the staff. Yesterday, he was interviewed by the media in Shanghai. As the only photographer who has served for "National Geographic" for over 30 years, Yamashita, over 60 years old, will pass on his experience to the students in Shanghai. And as a senior in the industry, he also pays attention to the works of Chinese photographers and frankly points out that their works are too fake.

Mike Yamashita is a person who records stories with photos. The topics he shot for the American "National Geographic" include: "Marco Polo", "The Great Wall", "Mekong River", "Zheng He's Voyages to the West Ocean" and other large-scale topics with historical depth. Because there are few people generous enough to give young people the opportunity to enter the high-end photography circle, Beijing De Tao Group founded a master studio, which absorbed 50 masters from industries such as animation, architecture, industry, and photography, and invited them to reside in China, select students, let students follow the masters to work and get enlightenment. Yamashita hopes to use this opportunity to pass on his years of experience to the students, "My experience is that photography must go to the wild for practice, then return to the classroom for display, everyone analyzes whether there are alternative shooting methods together, and then reshoot. With just a week of practice, their learning effect will rise exponentially."

Talking about the photographic works of Chinese photographers, Yamashita said: "I have observed in China for a long time and found that what Chinese photographers shoot is fake, with too much overly technical stuff, mostly staged shots and designed scenes. However, as an international photographer, you cannot preset the scene, you must give people real things. I had to commit in advance when working for 'National Geographic' that all the shots are real scenes, and Photoshop technology should be avoided as much as possible. For example, I saw Jiuzhaigou for the first time in a book, thinking how beautiful that picture was, but when I got there, I found it wasn't like that at all. The photos were overly Photoshopped. What I want to convey to Chinese students is not to meet the standards of whoever they work for, I really want to pass on the spirit of pursuing actual shooting to them, even to Chinese photographers."

As one of the contemporary famous photography masters, Mike Yamashita has been a regular contributor and contracted photographer for the American "National Geographic" since 1979, for a total of 32 years. His "China Journey" published in the "National Geographic" in 2001 won the magazine's Best Story Award and Best Photography Award. "National Geographic gave photographers sufficient time, money, and emotion, but didn't give a single chance for failure. If your work is rejected, there won't be a second chance, so photographers must do their best to complete the work well." Mike Yamashita said that he spends at least six weeks shooting a special topic, the longest being two years for "Zheng He"; it took three hours to shoot a "harvest"; he spends six months outside every year, and can only contact his family via maritime satellite phone and network video. Yamashita said: "What you see may be the last generation of photographers, and there will no longer be such a working model. Everything can be obtained on the Internet. Professionalism has been strangled by technology. More and more photography studios are opening up, and more and more photos are entering art galleries in the form of new media art..."