Ruan Yizhong: The Essence of Photography Is Discovery and Documentation — a Selfie Is Just Self-Pity in Front of a Mirror | Interviews

"What I most want to hold onto when I take a photograph is the goodness in human nature: the trust and help people give each other, their gratitude and dependence on the land, their reverence for heaven and their care for things."

On the evening of March 23, 2018, at an event in Beijing, the 68-year-old Ruan Yizhong told a room of young listeners about the hardest photograph he has ever taken.

In 1986, in Xuhai, Mudan Township, Pingtung County, a few households sat fenced inside Taiwan's most secretive military base, waiting to be relocated. Ruan had an approval document from the Taiwan Garrison Command in hand, and was still turned away at the gate. In the lull while the guards counted the equipment he had to surrender before they would let him through, a scene appeared on the horizon that he swore he would risk everything to grab: a row of villagers competing to see who could turn the most somersaults.

"The instant I pressed the shutter, a prayer went up in my heart: 'Heaven, please help me!'" Ruan said that night.

The painter Chen Danqing later saw the photograph and asked Ruan, "in dead earnest," whether God had pressed the shutter for him. Ruan agrees with the description. He believes every good photograph he has taken — and every flash of insight the people, events and objects in front of his lens have given him — is a gift from heaven. "Even the greatest photographer is only someone who is good at receiving gifts. Any once-in-a-lifetime frame takes your whole attention and your whole effort, and that instant is the only one you get in this life. You will never meet it again, so you stay ready. That is the kind of photographer I am: one who is always ready to receive a gift," he said.

Born in 1950 in Yilan, Taiwan, Ruan Yizhong is one of the best-known photographers in the Chinese-speaking world. His work is humanist documentary photography; he has held solo shows in France, the United States, Mexico and Sweden, and his pictures are held by institutions including the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. His finest work records rural Taiwan in the twentieth century, and his photography books include Man and Land, Nostalgia in Square Format and Lost Elegance. "What I most want to hold onto when I take a photograph is the goodness in human nature: the trust and help people give each other, their gratitude and dependence on the land, their reverence for heaven and their care for things," he wrote in one of them.

The British photographer Bryn Campbell once wrote of him: "His photographs may not be conceited, but they never lack bearing or character. Because they do not chase novelty or lean on stylistic effect, but speak simply and directly, they carry an uncompromising dignity and integrity." The French photographer Jean Dieuzaide said: "In the world of photography, I have never met anyone so eager to reveal the full depth and power of an image."

Ruan's career began in 1972. He was 22, just out of the army, when he joined Hansheng (ECHO) magazine and, by a twist of fate, became a photographer. He had no training at all; he picked up a camera and walked straight out onto the streets of Taiwan. "My first teacher in photography was the subject in front of my lens, and nothing else," he says.

In 1975 he left Hansheng for the monthly Family. The women's magazine asked him to introduce one place worth visiting every month, but Taiwan had no travel guides then, so Ruan found his destinations from the crude route maps printed on intercity bus fare charts. His criterion was simple: whichever place names sounded prettiest, he went there first. That is how he reached so many Taiwanese villages, and how he took some of the most important photographs of his life — every picture in Man and Land, for instance, first ran in that magazine. The Taiwanese writer Chen Yingzhen said Ruan had "vividly recorded the reality behind Taiwanese society's headlong dash toward growth."

By the 1980s Ruan had written two books, Masters of Contemporary Photography and New Talents in Contemporary Photography, and was regarded as the evangelist who brought Western photography to the Chinese-speaking world. In 1990 he and his wife, Yuan Yaoyao, founded Photographers Press, and two years later the two of them launched the bilingual Chinese-English magazine Photographers International. It introduced outstanding photographers and pictures from around the world to Chinese readers, and it also pushed many then-unknown contemporary Chinese photographers onto the international stage: Lü Nan, Liu Zheng, Fang Dazeng, Lu Yuanmin, Xiao Quan, Han Lei, RongRong, Qiu Zhijie, Wang Jinsong. Ruan even talked masters such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, William Klein and Édouard Boubat into contributing free of charge, and the magazine thrived.

That work earned him a much-quoted assessment from Chen Danqing: "Among people in mainland China who care about 'world photography,' or what I call 'serious photography,' and who are around forty years old, the name Ruan Yizhong must be irreplaceable — he is the man who brought world photography to China and preached it here. I have even heard that several mainland photographers have given Ruan Yizhong the honorific 'godfather of photography.'"

Ruan had planned to run Photographers International for at least 100 issues; it was forced to close after 62. The reason: after the "9/21" earthquake hit Taiwan in 1999, Ruan and his wife joined the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation as volunteers. The volunteering took most of their time and energy, and the magazine had to go. It was through that work that the couple came to feel the "compassion and wisdom" of Tzu Chi's Dharma Master Cheng Yen, and they later converted to Buddhism.

In 2016 Ruan set up the Ruan Yizhong Humanistic Photography Award to encourage documentary photography with a humanist spirit, "in the hope of correcting, even slightly, the present imbalance in how photography is practiced." "The photography in fashion today leans heavily toward the conceptual, and its humanist spirit is thinning out. That worries me. … [Photographers] care only about expressing their own cleverness and concepts and slight the meaning of their subjects, which easily turns the image into a means rather than the purpose of the work," he wrote in the award's founding statement.

In January 2018, nearly 70, he reached another landmark: the Ruan Yizhong Taiwan Story House opened in his hometown of Yilan. The museum uses the photographs he has taken over the years to tell the story of Taiwan's past. He thinks of them as a folk visual record of the island, and plans to publish ten volumes of his complete Taiwan photography in 2020, to be donated to public libraries and art museums.

In February his new book, Listening: The Coffee Years and the Vinyl Age, came out on the mainland. Through coffee and vinyl records he recalls his own life and its history, and also the changes in Taiwanese society. "I've drunk coffee since I was small. I was a country kid, but the little shops back then sold a sweet the size of a pineapple cake — coffee wrapped in sugar, labeled 'Brazilian coffee.' Wow, Brazil, so far away. In our small village those two words alone set my mind wandering: something from the other side of the earth. It felt as if drinking that coffee sent my spirit to the southern hemisphere too, and I could leave the countryside for a while," he told QDaily.

He still keeps the rhythm of an agrarian society: asleep by nine at night, up at three in the morning. After getting up he goes into the darkroom and "properly enlarges" negatives he shot years ago. Apart from breakfast and lunch, he works until half past three in the afternoon. Then, every day from 3:30 to 5:30, he drinks coffee he has roasted himself and listens to vinyl he has hunted down.

At the interview the white-haired Ruan seemed full of energy: cheerful, talkative, quick to laugh out loud. It matched the way he introduced himself to the audience that evening in Beijing: "I'm an old man who has been taking photographs for more than 40 years and who thinks he'll be young forever. However old I get, I'll always have the heart of a 16- or 17-year-old."

Q = QDaily

R = Ruan Yizhong

Sometimes when I see a picture, the first thing that sounds in my head is a melody

Q: In your book you mention that you've collected more than 10,000 vinyl records. Among them, are there any you think especially precious, or love especially?

R: No, honestly. Some of them I bought only because they were cheap. There's a secondhand shop near us called Treasure Hunt House. At one point the imported records it carried were so cheap you hardly had to choose — you carried them out by the box. As long as I could lift them and had somewhere to put them, that was enough. I bought a huge pile and to this day I don't know what I bought.

Q: By the box?

R: Yes. They'd been kept in decent condition, because the climate abroad is drier, so for a while I bought things I had no need to buy. Why buy so many? It was a wish, really. Better than letting them sit there unwanted — I had the space, and I was preserving a bit of musical heritage. That was the thinking.

If you're asking what I actually listen to, of course there are specific things. Classical music is my favorite, and within it the Baroque is what I never tire of. The music I really keep returning to belongs to a particular age, one of harmony, where everything is just right and nothing is too grand. Sometimes the ensemble is too large; symphonies, honestly, I rarely listen to. They seem to demand real concentration, sitting up straight so you don't miss a detail. The point was to relax, and if listening to music turns into such a formal business, I can't do it often. But simply scored chamber music, or solos, or sonatas — those I play all the time. Two instruments, say piano and violin. Smaller pieces, closer to the Classical period. Those I never tire of. That's roughly what my favorites are.

Q: Do you think coffee and music have shaped your photography?

R: Honestly, music matters more. If I insisted coffee had an influence, I'd be fooling myself.

Q: How does music work on you, exactly?

R: Well — sometimes when I see a picture, the first thing that sounds in my head is a melody. Sight and hearing together make a very strong force. Just looking at one object, a color, a shape, a line, a play of light and shadow, can make you forget yourself, or bring up a piece of music you haven't heard in years. That shows music is working on me all the time, working on my heart. Without music I wouldn't look at things so closely, or with such absorption.

A reporter from a Fujian television station once asked a question nobody had asked before. He said, "I often see music in your pictures." I said, my word, that's sharp. When I'm taking a photograph, that is exactly the state I'm in. When I look at things, I'm seeing melody. You'll say, how can you see a melody? A melody is heard. But when I see that shape, it has a melody in it, and that sense of melody joins up with my hearing.

So my photographs pay great attention to line and to melody — where a person stands, high or low, in front or behind, that kind of proportion, that harmonious relation. The highest thing music reaches for is harmony. When you look at my photographs you're drawn, with pleasure, into what I was trying to catch, into what I care about. And what is that? It's that because I caught it, the meaning of the thing stands out, until its value is greater than it was. I think that is the most important gift music gives people. It lifts the spiritual state of our ordinary lives, so that we become, in a way, better people. However chaotic things are outside, as long as there's music everything can be borne; if something has gone wrong, everything can be eased. Music heals; it gives the spirit a massage.

Q: Music flows. At the instant you press the shutter, do you feel you're catching a high point or a low point in the music? Anything like that?

R: No, there's no reference like that. But music certainly shapes the frame of mind I look at things with.

However great a photographer is, he can never be a hundred percent the creator

Q: In 2016 you set up the Ruan Yizhong Humanistic Photography Award. Its founding statement says: "The essence of photography is discovery and documentation — that is, looking outward, finding the relations between things and events, catching them, and passing their meaning on to more people." Could you say more? Painting, literature and journalism also discover and record; where does photography differ?

R: The biggest difference is that without a subject, photography can't make an image at all. So the subject exists first — a person, an event, a thing already exists, the world is already the way it is, and you are a participant and a witness. You aren't part of it, yet you can't cut yourself off from it, because you saw it on the spot. So what did you see? What is your relation to it? You have to establish that relation first, and only then do you know how to catch it. That's why it matters that however great a photographer is, he can never be a hundred percent the creator — half the credit belongs to the subject.

Photographers have to recognize this. You can't say, "I'm the creator, and it makes no difference whether you're there or not." Why not? People say, well, I saw it, it became part of my memory, and later I can create by drawing on that memory, chewing the experience over. That doesn't work. The instant you're moved, the instant you understand something, is the instant of your creation — the two are simultaneous. No other medium has to deal with that kind of tension. You have to become extremely tense in that moment. But that tension is exactly what I'm addicted to (laughs). It's so full of challenge: either you get a good picture or it wasn't worth taking. The thing itself is completely ordinary, but once you seize it, it becomes extraordinary — so photography has something of the Midas touch. Through a skilled hand, every ordinary thing takes on new meaning.

What I want is to find what others haven't found. And record what? Whatever I think is good. I affirm it. Because you've made it so good, it can really move people. You tell a story — joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, whatever — and it touches the viewer, so that everyone who looks at your photograph returns to that scene, or returns to their own life, and suddenly gets a spark: why can't I find something this interesting, this meaningful, in my own life? That photograph changes something in them. Maybe from now on I should pay closer attention to my own life. That's a good place to start. Once your vision opens, the knack opens with it, and that's how you come to understand things. Most important of all, your heart opens too. Why? Because to take photographs is already to be finding the good in others. You're not looking past people, thinking you yourself are the best.

So photography is finding the good in others, and becoming better yourself. To me that's the most important meaning in it. And then — passing it on (laughs).

Q: The statement also says: "Since computers, digital cameras and phone photography became common, the technical bar for photography has dropped very low, but it has also made people stop respecting their subjects and stop treasuring the chance and the fate in every press of the shutter." What do you make of today's selfie culture? Some say we're in a narcissistic age, where everyone feels like a photographer.

R: Not really — I just think it's a pity. You assume people will be interested in your selfie? Everyone is taking selfies, so nobody is interested in yours. Frankly, if you think your click rate is high, forget it, you're fooling yourself. Because taking a selfie is pitying yourself in front of a mirror. And when someone pities himself, other people think: go ahead and pity yourself, what's it to me?

But it has become a general condition, because phones are so convenient, and the thing everyone is closest to, and faces most often, is the phone. The phone has become everything. A person has no other channel left for reaching the outside world, so he can't get away from it either. Every time I see someone taking a selfie on a phone I think how pitiable it is. I don't admire it, I feel sorry for them. How is it that they can't talk with other people, and can't even find the best kind of conversation with themselves? What happens with the phone isn't conversation. It's an unconscious act, the act of someone at a loss, someone who doesn't know what to do next or what to say next. But there's nothing to be done. Everyone is adrift together, and it really is a pity.

Q: Some of them Photoshop the pictures too.

R: Yes, and I find that a pity as well. How can a person be so unable to pull himself out of it? It won't make anyone happy. It's as if something is always missing and you keep trying to fill it, and it can't be filled.

Q: But some people are happy when the shares and likes pile up.

R: And what if they're happy? It only leaves them emptier and more lost (laughs).

When photography becomes contemporary art, it loses its depth and its warmth

Q: What do you make of the decline of documentary photography and the rise of conceptual, artistic photography? Does it bring problems? As you see it, it seems to mean the humanist spirit is thinning out.

R: That's right, exactly. Photography's strongest quality is documentation. The detail it records is more accurate and clearer than what other media capture, and it puts you there; it can even serve as evidence — here's the picture, so it happened. But since digital arrived, post-production is possible. You can now put two things into one frame that should never have appeared in the same frame. People, events and objects can be recombined. It's almost painting with images. Painting used to go from a blank surface to something; now photography can do the same, making something out of nothing. I shoot here, I shoot there, I fit the pieces together, and I turn what doesn't exist into a fact.

So photography is changing. It is no longer documentation; it has become image-making. That's fine by me too — it's a bit like a fairy tale. But when it turns into contemporary art, when it starts moving toward contemporary art, I notice one thing: it has begun to lose its warmth and its depth. Never mind that painting did the same. Painting used to express something of human nature, which is why it gave us a certain warmth; now painting doesn't bother with that either. And if photography wants to become a follower of contemporary art, then very quickly a photograph stops looking like a photograph and starts to look like an abstract painting. You don't even need a camera for the image — you could just paint with silver salts.

So the nature of photography has changed enormously. When people still create with cameras today, it has become a matter of serving their own art and their own concepts, rather than wanting to record the fact of someone else's existence. Is that wrong? No. It's a new direction. And once a new direction gets attention, this documentary quality — traditional photography, as it used to be — is relatively neglected. In exhibition chances, publishing chances, or chances of winning a competition, that kind of work often ends up on the margin.

I've never chased trends. Whatever is hot at the moment, I think, doesn't need one more person like me. What do I love doing? The undervalued, the forgotten, even the things that can no longer be found, the things about to vanish — as long as you take part, a little more of it survives. That's what interests me most. When I was photographing the Taiwanese countryside, Taiwan had the least confidence in itself it has ever had. Everyone thought local things were backward and only the West was modern. We were to chase the new and throw out the old. If none of you were photographing it, that's exactly what interested me. I'd think: how can something this good have nobody looking after it? Nobody photographing it? That's the sort of thing I've always done.

So at this point, since I have some influence and some resources, I felt I ought to do something to restore a little balance. So I founded an award specifically to encourage and affirm the people who keep working along the path of humanist photography.

And it isn't only about humanist photography, documentary photography, vinyl or coffee. I'd say I'm someone who has worked out a few things about how to live. I have my own way of life and my own attitude to it. Whatever era this is, I still live by the rhythm of an agrarian society. Ideally I'm asleep before nine and up at three, and I usually manage it. People ask why I still keep that schedule. Precisely because everyone else is abandoning the best of habits: sleeping early and rising early.

In an age of such rapid, dizzying change, how do you keep a state of mind that isn't disturbed at its root? That is a kind of practice. How do you hold onto it? If you can grasp it and hold it, you won't feel anxious, you won't feel you lack any sense of existing. Everyone's out there doing something — why am I not doing it! You won't feel that uncertainty about what tomorrow will bring.

I think my next book may talk about this attitude to life, this way of living, and perhaps it can be some use as a reference for the times. Everyone is after change, after novelty. Right now is exactly when we should be asking what cannot change and need not change. And then, in the things everyone considers old, we should find new meaning again, so that they can go on existing into the future. Otherwise our days are nothing but a long process of losing things. We think we're constantly pursuing things when in fact we're losing them. It isn't that we grasp some good quality and carry it forward. People should take what is good in tradition and put it into practice now, and then carry it into the future. That's what I care about most.

Q: You said just now that some things can't change. In your view, which ones?

R: The human heart can't change. Human nature can't change. Morality, principles, attitude — can these be changed on a whim? Some things simply cannot be changed. Change them and you're in trouble.

My photographs are a record of the best people, events and things of Taiwan's golden age

Q: Your most influential work photographs the Taiwanese countryside of the twentieth century. This year your Ruan Yizhong Taiwan Story House opened in Yilan. I'm curious: compared with before, what is the Taiwanese countryside like now? What do you feel and think about it? Has the countryside emptied out, with almost everyone moving to the cities?

R: No, the countryside is full of people now — it's all tourist sites. Taiwan is so small that developing the local economy requires plenty of places for people to visit, but the local character has thinned out, and that's the pity of it. The original state of things is gone, the local character is gone, everywhere looks much the same, and that's the most serious problem. Countryside or city, they all seem alike. You can't find a way of living that belongs purely to one place; even the food is the same. Transport is so fast now that places that used to be far away have become close. So the easier a place is to reach, once the sense of distance shrinks, the journey disappears with it — and that is rather a pity.

Of course, when I was photographing Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, Taiwan was changing too. It's just that I paid particular attention then to the scenes, people and pictures that moved me, so I leaned that way. From another angle, everything around me was full of things in the middle of changing — things that didn't sit right with me. Which is to say, I thought those things deserved to be properly recorded by me, using what I was good at, so that their value and their beauty could become something that stands for something. However much everything outside changes, what once existed and once moved me will move others too, and become permanent. I truly hope these things will still be here in the future. I'm only a witness.

So although Taiwan has changed a great deal, and most people aren't familiar with it anymore — some don't even know the basics; there are people who eat rice and don't know what a rice plant looks like. Still less can they grasp the feel of ordinary daily life in that agrarian society, which no longer exists. But it lives on, vividly, in my enormous number of photographs, so my photographs can be organized into one Taiwanese story after another. Sometimes about villages, sometimes about people, sometimes about trades, sometimes about folk arts and opera…

I think my photographs are a record of the best people, events and things of Taiwan's golden age. As it happens, the local government gave me this space, letting me hold four exhibitions in a row, one for each season. I've traveled most of Taiwan and I've already sorted the pictures. The final selection isn't fixed, but I could go on exhibiting for another ten years without difficulty. The stories are already moving a lot of people. Some see their ancestors in the photographs, some see their own childhoods, and suddenly my pictures have become a visual chronicle of every town. That's when I realized: I'm using one person's strength to put together a full record of Taiwan's photographic and cultural heritage. Once I saw it that way, all the material I'd once had to set aside, sitting in negatives, never properly sorted, gave me work to do. Now I take pleasure in it every day. If I just sat around alone listening to music and drinking coffee, there'd still be a sense of emptiness. The music ends and it's, ah, ah, now what? But when the music ends it's like being recharged: I have more energy and spirit to go and enlarge my negatives properly. So this has become an entirely happy thing.

Martial law in Taiwan, and its lifting, had no real effect on me

Q: You were photographing during Taiwan's martial-law period, when it was forbidden to photograph any coastline, bridge, mountain or restricted zone. That doesn't seem to have stopped you; you still made excellent work, which seems almost unbelievable. Why do you think that was possible? How do you see the effect of martial law on your work?

R: No — well, if they say you can't photograph a place, you just don't photograph it (laughs). What I cared about most was the countryside, and I never went near where the guards were posted. Back then bridges couldn't be photographed, stations couldn't be photographed, public places couldn't be photographed — and those all happened to be places I didn't want to shoot anyway. Some of it you would find absurd, of course: places with nothing there at all, not even a sign. What was Taiwan's most famous sign then? "Surveying, drawing and photography prohibited here." And another absurd one: "Hunting." In Taiwan's early years, as soon as you got near the mountains there was wildlife, and Indigenous people loved to hunt. Hunting meant weapons, and weapons might mean crime. But by the time I was taking photographs there was nothing left to hunt, and the sign was still standing there. Particularly absurd.

So, fine — where there was nothing at all and the police said you couldn't shoot, you couldn't shoot. I was once given trouble by police in the middle of the night, and once taken to a police station in broad daylight for questioning. But I knew that explaining myself was enough, as long as my manner was right. Go head to head with them and you were guaranteed to end up inside, because the police then had the legal power to hold you for two days without giving a reason. As long as you didn't push back, you always came out unscathed. And I always felt I had work to do; I wasn't wandering around shooting on a whim in those days.

Q: The monthly Family?

R: Right, I had a press card. I only had to explain, and if that really failed, at worst I'd hand over the film. Most important of all — I had a friend who was arrested for wearing a jacket, an olive-green army coat. The police asked him why he was allowed to wear a military uniform. In fact he'd bought it at random in a secondhand shop; civilian clothes come in that color too. But at the time the police believed they had the authority to demand an answer. Because of that incident, that man became one of the founders of a radical opposition party — how can the Kuomintang behave like this? I think it depends on how you react. For some people, one sentence can change the course of a life.

I've always believed the most important thing is this: since I'm going to take photographs, I have to take them well. If I have an article to hand in, I do it well. Everything else is secondary. I won't let other things interfere. So I also knew that airing more opinions about whatever I found unreasonable in the martial-law era would do my work no good. I never turned it into subject matter either. That doesn't mean I didn't care about the reality of Taiwan. Different people have different callings. Mine is whatever I'm doing, and I have to do it as well as I possibly can, and let nothing interfere. That's all.

You need wisdom. Go head to head with them and you only do your own work worse. You'll be knocked off course yourself. Not just then — now too. Even now I won't let election results change what I do. As a citizen I always vote; I won't waste the ballot. I use my own judgment and my own choice and vote for whoever I vote for. I won't express dissatisfaction by other means. I'll always speak through a citizen's vote, and that's enough.

Q: Last year was also the 30th anniversary of the lifting of martial law in Taiwan. Looking back over the decades before and after it, what do you feel most strongly? Do you think that period of history affected you?

R: It never affected me, because I'm not easily affected. I only feel grateful. That time, that way of doing things, still let Taiwan's economy take off and Taiwan's culture flourish. That's a good thing. Set aside the final transition period; martial law was lifted, after all, and it was the Kuomintang that lifted it.

So, martial law and its lifting — many friends of mine have views about it, of course. I remember a reporter from one of the most influential mainland media outlets who came over to Taiwan and asked me the same question: what effect did martial law and its lifting have on you? I said, none to speak of. Afterward he didn't write the piece (laughs), though the interview went on at my house for a good while.

Q: Right — I read in an earlier interview that martial law had no effect on you, and I found it hard to credit, so I wanted to check it with you in person.

R: When I set out to do something, I won't let anything affect it. That's the standard I hold myself to.

Q: In another interview you recalled carrying a book of poems with you during military service, to hold off the absurdity. Looking back, how do you feel about that? Do you think literature and art are the best redemption and resistance in an authoritarian society?

R: You could put it that way. Mostly, when I was in the army, frankly, I couldn't stand it. I felt I spent every waking hour obeying orders, with no way to express a shred of personal will. If you were unhappy or uncomfortable there was no way to show it; you only obeyed. And if you drew a squad leader who liked to torment recruits — the army really did have some people whose characters were bent a little out of shape — I felt at the time that I couldn't get through the days. New recruits served three months; for the first two I truly couldn't bear it. There was only one way out: how could I get my mind to drift somewhere else? It was a bit absurd. I'd be running with my rifle, sprinting, dropping flat, and then the next group would go and I'd stand there for a few minutes before it was my turn to drop and crawl forward again — and that's when I read. Because poems are short, just a few lines (laughs). Looking back it really was absurd, but I did it. In those days I read nearly every book of poetry that existed in Taiwan. That's how it was.

Care for the environment we live in and concern for human affairs — that is humanist spirit

Q: After you converted to Buddhism, what effect do you think it had on your life?

R: It had one. I'm more tolerant now. I used to be extremely strict, and the people around me couldn't quite take it. Whatever I looked at, I'd see the flaws at once. What someone had done badly, what wasn't right, problems they weren't even aware of themselves — I was especially sensitive to that. And I could often tell in advance that someone was about to make a mistake, which everyone found unbearable. Then I came under my master's influence. In other words, I used to be hard to win over; my master won me over, and I converted.

Q: In the 1990s you ran Photographers International, a very influential magazine, and three of its issues were specials on China. After all these years, how do you see the changes in Chinese photography? Any new impressions or observations?

R: It has changed enormously, of course — so many opportunities have landed on the mainland. You could call the mainland the most active place for photography in the world; it has by far the most photography festivals. Really, festivals elsewhere can barely keep going these days, and there are only a handful left. In Taiwan many places managed one or two editions and then died out. The change on the mainland makes me envious. I watched the mainland's photography scene go from a time when nobody could get published and nobody paid attention, the hardest of times, to now — and who'd have thought it, the people who appeared in those issues of my magazine are all big names today.

I'm glad the mainland scene is so lively now. I'm also fortunate to have a large readership there, so I feel I should do something. Teaching classes and setting up the humanistic photography award is only a beginning… And setting up the award now is exactly the right moment.

However much photography goes on changing, however much richer and more varied its styles become, one thing should always be valued and should never change: photography's humanist spirit. People ask, does humanist photography mean you have to photograph people? No. You can photograph anything. As long as what you show reflects a person's regard for the environment they live in and their concern for human affairs, that is humanist spirit. You have to look at everything with empathy. When you photograph an object, is it only an object? An object has its own life, its own way of existing. And humans are a species too, so you should use empathy rather than only your own point of view. You always have to come back to what you're really photographing and what you're photographing it for. It isn't about taking an image and making it your own creation; it's about what you actually mean to do.

Q: What have you been thinking about most lately?

R: My Taiwan Story House. How do I make it matter more to ordinary people? How does it become memory? I hope it lets the next generation know what their ancestors did, and that those things are still of use to them.

Q: What's the biggest change in yourself in recent years?

R: I've grown old.

Q: Do you feel it strongly?

R: Not very strongly, but I accept everything early, whatever it is. Any of us could leave this earth at any time, and once you're gone, you're gone. If you haven't done anything genuinely useful, you quickly stop counting for anything, and nobody remembers you. It's not that you have to be remembered. It's that the things I worked so hard at — do they hold up over time, do they mean anything to others? Only what is useful to others goes on existing.

But the number of people I influence is small, maybe just a handful, and they'll always be there. It's a kind of inheritance; it passes on. It's like a candle. One candle — how bright can it be, how long can it burn? There's only one way: before this candle goes out, light other candles with it. If you're too stingy to light others, how long can your life last? You just turn to ash. But if you light other candles, then once you've turned to ash the light is still there. When I say I'm old, I mean I'm only a candle. Before I turn to ash, I hope to light a candle thicker and longer than mine. And I have to tell it: before you go out, you also have to light other candles.

Q: Is there anything about society today that worries you?

R: Every age and every society has things that make people glad and things that worry them; that can't be avoided. There has never been a golden age with only gladness and no worry. But I just go straight ahead and do what I think needs doing, so there aren't many things I worry about. Maybe they're there — it's not that I can't see them, but what use is my worrying? What use is it for me to worry that photography is getting more and more conceptual? In other words, in a certain sense, what use is criticism?

Q: So you think criticism is useless?

R: Criticism should learn from photography too: discover and affirm. Find what's good about something, and then affirm it. Whatever isn't good, you don't need to give it any attention at all — it will be weeded out on its own. You can't spend your days hunting for faults to attack in order to prove how righteous you are, how strong your sense of mission is, how socially responsible, how much of a public intellectual. Can you actually do anything? What matters most is sowing. You reap only what you sow — that's always nearer the truth than the idea that progress comes only from criticism.

(Intern Wang Sui also contributed to this article.)

The banner image is "The Deepest Nostalgia, Yilan, Four Seasons, 1990 (cropped)," and the long cover image is "Portrait of a Soul, Xinyi Township, Nantou County, 1980." Both photographs are by Ruan Yizhong.