The Shanghai Center of Photography. Source: Liu Heung Shing.

Lisa Movius, International photography centre joins Shanghai’s museum mile, The Art Newspaper, 2 June 2015

“Photography has always been very popular in China,” says Liu Heung Shing, the founder and chief executive of the Shanghai Center of Photography (SCoP), which opened on 22 May. The Hong Kong-born, US-trained photojournalist says that in the past decade China has inched away from a duality of entrenched traditions of photographically emulating Chinese ink landscapes or photography as political propaganda. The old guard “is fading out, and the young see it as self-expression, as a document, as an art form”, he says.

Welcome to the neighbourhood
The centre is part of the West Bund Cultural Corridor, which aspires to become China’s museum mile and is home to the Yuz and Long museums; a branch of ShanghArt Gallery is also due to open. The inaugural show, Photography from the 20th Century (until 22 July), features images from the collection of Atlanta- and Shanghai-based Jin Hongwei, a former photo editor at Shanghai Pictorial and a stakeholder in the photo agency Sipa Press.

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