Author | Zhang Xiaorui Ree Picture | Author provides
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In the fourth grade of elementary school, Xia Jingyi started her journey of growth in Beijing due to her parents' work. After graduating from Chaoyang Branch of Renmin University High School, she graduated from Budd College in New York in 2021.
Looking back now, high school and everyone have different impressions of relaxed academic studies in international schools. The school management is relatively strict and strict. For the purpose, we need to explore and consider more independently. Time is always full and full.
One aspect of pressure is related to the course I chose at that time. The school adopts the British college entrance examination system A-Level, and each student chooses three courses he likes to take and then take the exam.
In a limited range, Jingyi chose economics, mathematics, and art. "Economics and mathematics feel like they are making up for numbers."
She spends more time studying and exploring in art classes, and she doesn't even have a weekend break. stayed at school from Monday to Friday, and on weekends she went to the studio and stayed all day to make portfolios.
There were two art teachers in the high school at that time. One of them graduated from Central America and mainly taught art classes; the other one was a Russian-American. Jingyi feels that there are some differences in focus between the "artist personality" she has developed and the teachers who value A-Level.
After all, art is a subject that has differentiated. Art classes in international schools also need to match certain requirements under the examination mechanism.
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's preference for art also comes from the influence of the family.
My mother is engaged in education, and her father is an artist, and her creation mainly involves Chinese ink and calligraphy. Since childhood, I was inevitably staying in my father's studio. My father was creating or reading while creating. Those painting materials, books, and brushwork became the most intimate toys in childhood.
Jingyi and her father's works
As parents attend the opening ceremony and exhibition activities together, the patterns of art spread in life, and art is like her palm lines, growing up with her growth.
On the road to Jingyi Art Enlightenment, my father followed the artist style "Let it fly" .
My father once tried to teach her how to write calligraphy. For young children, unless they have special enthusiasm, this matter itself is boring, so they didn't hold on for long. My father valued freedom and happiness to express his temperament more, and his skills were second.
Because I see it every day, Jingyi is relatively familiar with creation. I painted my own paintings with my father, but communication has always existed. This is a process of respecting children, not guiding them with uniqueness, but treats children as creators.
In front of the painting, adults may not necessarily do better than children. After all, Picasso once said that I could draw as good as Raphael at the age of 12, but I only wanted to draw children's paintings throughout my life.
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Jingyi's understanding of art changed after college.
When applying for university, Jing Yi went to major in art history. For her since childhood, she has been "mixed" in the art industry, artists are cute. Art and her own life are nowhere close to her, art galleries, galleries or party cafes, and work and life are intertwined.
She hopes that by studying art history, she will do some service work for artists, such as research, curation, and writing... After going to college, Jingyi discovered that photography can be used as an art medium: photography occurs almost every day in life, and photography art, as a relatively young way of creation, is more direct and infectious in visual communication.
After signing up for photography classes in the first semester of freshman year, Jingyi will sign up for photography classes every semester."So in the end I naturally became a graduate of the photography department." The review of the dual degree in art history and photography of has been passed.
Jingyi thinks it is a very lucky thing to learn photography at Bad College. The photography department teaches photography in the most traditional way. During the whole freshman year, students will be asked to take black and white 35mm film, and they will wash film and enlarge photos in the darkroom every week. This is the happiest thing.
This arrangement of the school is not only a priority for basic skills, but also a foundation for students' understanding and perception of the photography medium. Most of the other friends who study photography start taking digital photos from their freshman year, while Jingyi waits until her junior year to start. The two years of learning experience in the darkroom of
has shaped her understanding of "what is a good photo".
After taking photos every week, seniors will help you choose. Unlike the answers to math problems ABCD, in photography, the boundaries between right and wrong are not as clear as possible. The wonderful thing about
is that when you encounter a good photo, you will "wow" and sigh; after taking the class together, the critical part is not just the teacher's narration, but everyone comments on each other.
is constantly getting feedback in this process, so you can try new ones, continue to receive feedback, and cycle well. The director of the Department of
is the world-renowned photographer Stephen Xiao. He once taught an Instagram photography class with unprecedented expectations. This course is not open to photography students, but is more like an experiment, mainly facing students in other majors. Jingyi was very excited when she found out that she must enroll in this course.
"I sent him a private message on Ins, but he didn't reply to me." I said to him, "Like confession - I especially want to take this class."
Just one day came out of the bathroom and met Teacher Stephen Xiao. The teacher said to him by email when facing this freshman who was still a little nervous. Jingyi made a collection of works on the circle of friends with Chinese characteristics, including how to arrange the nine-grid grids and how to match the pictures with text.
Finally, she appeared in the classroom successfully. As the only freshman photography student, she studied photography with other students in literature, history, philosophy and engineering. The coursework is also quite interesting. According to the topic assigned by the teacher, I post an Instagram every day.
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3 During her school holiday, she arranged for herself a gallery internship, and confirmed through her work that she was more focused on creation, or to do service work around artists.
also arranged to study in Japan. When I was in Tokyo, I received an invitation from a friend to attend the opening of the exhibition of the famous Japanese photographer Moriyama Avenue. After going there, I found out that it was a private opening ceremony with only more than 20 people.
Yingyi said that she was the worst in Japanese present, "Maybe the biggest gain of going to Japan was to meet Moriyama Avenue and talk about art with him."
During the summer vacation,Yingyi contributed his photography works and by chance made a photo album like a matchbox.
Jingyi's photography collection has been to many art markets and book fairs
After staying on the campus in New York for two and a half years, Jingyi went to the campus in Berlin to exchange and entered the School of Arts and Sciences. The course model is distributional requirement, and all subjects are divided into several academic fields, about 9. Each student needs to complete four credits in each field before graduation, that is, a regular full semester class.
So in Berlin, in addition to taking photography classes, also needs to find time to learn computer, natural social sciences, literature, history and philosophy, and humanities general courses. Unfortunately, after studying in Berlin for more than two months, the epidemic began.
The initial anxiety was not because of the epidemic around you, but because of the spreading emotions. One day, the news reported that the epidemic occurred in Berlin. The school notified that some students were close contacts and their families frequently called for inquiries. Once, in a flower shop run by a Asian (Vietnam), I was repeatedly asked which country I was from, and I even dramatically wore a mask to cover my nose.
That period was simple and self-disciplined, attending classes, studying, cooking by yourself, taking a simple walk out, staying... Later, I returned to China and started a year of online classes. Fortunately, the overall time was not reversed day and night, but there were also a few days when I needed to stay up late or get up at three o'clock to take classes or take exams. Compared with on campus, communication between effects and environment is lacking.
Jingyi took every meal he made when he was in Berlin
When he was quarantined at home in Beijing, Jingyi watched "Accident in this World" written by Japanese documentary director Nitan Kazuhiro. Some of the experiences, theories and principles in brought Jingyi the motivation to create, so he especially wanted to make a documentary.
By chance, I learned that my parents’ hometown in Yiyang, Hunan, there was a group of young people studying Huagu opera full-time at school. In addition, my grandmother was sick during that time, so she decided to go back to her hometown during the holiday to start the documentary filming.
Documentary poster taken by Jingyi
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documentary was finished, before returning to Beijing, Jingyi lived in Changsha for almost a year. Compared with Beijing, Changsha is a place with a lot of fireworks.
I just arrived in Changsha and no one knew me. Because of a friend, I met a group of friends, including those who make movies, arts, music, and coffee... Their lively life and growth experience are different from those who met in Beijing.
My former friends were basically classmates from the same school. When they get along with friends like Changsha, they are the best nutrients in her creation. Because Changsha is full of vitality, the joys inevitably make Jingyi unable to learn, so he returned to Beijing and completed his course steadily.
"I went to Changsha to come into contact with a wild, or a relatively ignited and relaxed lifestyle. , but you can't always relax, you must work hard to do something. " Jingyi decided to continue to study at the Film Academy.
When she was a school in New York, she worked as a film projectionist for one semester. Perhaps it was the experience that gave birth to the seeds of movies.
A young professor is particularly persistent in showing the films involved in the classroom in the film department's film screening hall, and arranges movies to be played two nights a week. Jingyi has become the successor of the projectionist who is about to graduate. The movies screened by
come from the themes of each semester, Asian films, modernism... Once, it was a collaboration with the Japanese Cultural Center to specially send films sent from Japan, which were first screened at the school, and then received at the archives in downtown New York for screening.
film is generally very heavy. In order to save costs during the mailing process, the metal plate in the middle of the original version will be replaced with a plastic plate. Therefore, during the show, you need to replace the plastic plate back to the metal plate. After the previous part is put, replace it quickly and then replace it with a plastic plate.
It feels a bit like peeling an apple continuously. While the audience was watching movies in the theater, Jing Yi and his classmates were busy in the screening hall. Even with the uninterrupted noise, it makes sense to look back now.
Jingyi Work Photos
Jingyi studied cinematography at the Beijing Film Academy. specially chose this major because she realized that most of the majors are boys.
"Cinematography requires such a perspective and requires more girls." Just like 95% of those who study art history are women, but most important professional positions and professor seats in art history are men. In the world of art, do women have to serve men? Women can also create good works, and some male artists do not do very well.
's advanced course at Beijing Electric is like returning to high school. The courses from Monday to Friday range from 8:30 in the morning to 5:30 in the afternoon, and there are elective courses in the evening, so I usually go to listen to them.
postscript
Now, the documentary about Changsha is in the third stage of shooting, Jingyi hopes to finish the later this year. As Moriyama Avenue once said: " photography is an act of youth. If one day I lose the sensibility of youth, then my photography will be over. " Jingyi's emotional creation and record are still beating frame by frame.
