Chinese on trains: photographer Wang Fuchun captures a nation’s progress over 40 years
Candid portraits of travellers on China’s railways expose how breakneck economic development transformed lives since reform in the 1970s to the present day
“Photography isn’t complicated,” Wang Fuchun says, when we meet in Xidan, a swarming shopping district in central Beijing. “Basically, you look for what inspires you and take a picture. It’s all about the act. Nothing technical, nothing complicated.”
I follow the tall, long-haired septuagenarian through the crowds of Saturday shoppers. He picks his targets quickly, snapping a courting couple, a vagrant asleep on a bench, a child holding a balloon and crying.
“It’s all about looking,” Wang says, gesturing to his eye and grinning like a small boy occupied with his favourite toy. “Most days, when I get home, I have thousands of photos to edit. I drive my family mad.”
Wang’s inclination to document human life means he seldom shoots landscapes. A combination of street-photographer fearlessness and natural charm has made him a formidable presence in the world of Chinese photography.
Collections such as “The People of Northeast China” and “Northeast Tiger” have garnered critical praise at photography festivals in China, but it is Wang’s signature series, “Chinese on the Train”, that has proved his most enduring work, captivating critics and gallery-goers for four decades.
The series, which documents travellers on China’s railways from 1978, was first collected in book form in 2001, and to mark the 40th anniversary of his work, a new edition has been released this year, prompting Wang to look back at his own journey, which began humbly, in a frosty corner of Japanese-controlled Manchukuo.