This article is from WeChat official account:Guyu Image-Tencent News (ID: ihuozhe), photography & writing & caption: pixel notes Lin Hongxian, editor: Steven Che, Zhou An
Don’t worry about anxiety, it’s more panic
I resigned from a major Internet company in China and fled Beijing. Yes, I am a photographer, the world is so big, I want to record. It was two years ago and I was exactly 30 years old. Many people are afraid of getting older, but I think age is a good thing. It gives you enough courage and experience to make choices. One of the benefits of maturity is to be able to bravely refuse some things you don’t want to do, for example, you don’t want to do nothing in the Internet giants.
I ran downstairs to breathe while working in a big factory
Naked resignation, giving up stocks and stable income, working for yourself, seems heroic, and often embarrassed. It means that there is no need to follow the 996 check-in system, and it also means that there is no fixed employer to pay for the time.
Anxiety is the biggest resonance of people in the workplace today. But when leaving the workplace, the anxiety is multiplied, and the anxiety is not even taken into account. Only panic is oncoming. Back to Guangzhou from Beijing, I stayed at home for a month and didn’t really think about it.doing what.
Looking out from my workstation, it is a lattice room with always bright lights
I have worked as a photojournalist in print media, as an editor at a portal, and as an operating person in charge of an information flow information platform, which happens to happen at different stages of the media revolution. The only constant is that I am always curious about the society around me. After seeing the production methods of different media forms, I have always believed that high-quality content has its own vitality. Perhaps, all that is needed is to pass time to verify.
The most positive way to verify is to get involved. Now that I think about it, it’s like a return-I’ve walked many paths, choose a self-recognized direction, and calm down to cultivate deeply.
I worked as a photographer, excerpts from “Chinese-style onlookers”
I have been in business for two years and lived in more than 50 hotels
I quickly established my own studio.
There is no stable financial support and no institutional confidence. These are two problems that can be seen with the naked eye.
In 2019, I was on a business trip to Beijing to shoot the takeaway boy, and they borrowed a coat for me
From 0 to 1, it is very difficult. In the beginning, from finding the topic, contacting the subject, to planning the trip, I had to worry about myself. Before every trip, you must carefully buy short-term insurance.
Later, I gradually developed a habit of taking a photo every time I went to a new city and settled in a new hotel. When I sorted the hard drive, I realized that I had stayed in more than 50 hotels in the past two years.
This has become a subtle ritual for me on the road alone.
Some hotels I have stayed in
People are in embarrassment, encountering the darkest moment
However, I finally have time to shoot some topics that I have long been interested in but have never had the opportunity to shoot.
After live broadcasts have sprung up in China, I’m very curious, in other countries and regions, Whether it is also changing. It happened that a friend was doing short video products in India. I contacted them and arrived in India.
Indian influencer gathering
This trip is a realistic version of my personal “people on the embarrassing journey”, and it also made me feel the “darkest moment” of heartbreak for the first time.
The moment I arrived at Delhi Gandhi Airport, the capital of India, I was in trouble. After arriving at the airport more than 1 am, I picked up my luggage by mistake. When I arrived at the hotel enthusiastically, I realized that the code lock could not be opened.
Indian railway station, man carrying luggage
I was suddenly desperate. All the equipment including the camera, lens, and microphone were in the lost luggage. For the first two days, I was in embarrassment of making phone calls, running to the airport, and finding luggage. Fortunately, the luggage was finally recovered.
According to a friend, I met Albe, who is responsible for digging grassroots celebrities in the local area.
Albe, a Chinese girl, and an Indian internet celebrity girl take a group photo
I followed Albe and her colleagues from Delhi to the remote village of Orchha. (Orchha ) Visit. Many grassroots internet celebrities come from poor urban villages and remote villages.
In the streets of Orchha, a village in northern India, cows lie on the side of the road in groups
Orchha in the northern village of India, grassroots celebrities performing snake dancing
The grassroots celebrity I remember most is called Komal. She was originally a housewife. She married a neighbor’s boy after graduating from university, and went to Delhi with her working husband. She has loved dancing since she was a child, Saw the girl dancing on the video platform, rekindled her dream, and began to make videos at home with her husband behind her back. When her husband goes to work at night and sleeps at home during the day, Komal pulls the curtain and dances with small movements. In the conservative regions of India, women dancing in public is considered a disorderly behavior.
Komal became popular for publishing dancing videos on the platform
Two months later, Komal got her first income from the short video platform. She happily showed her husband to persuade her family to support her. At first, she only had an income of 2,000 rupees a week, and later was able to earn up to 200,000 rupees a month (about 19,000 yuan), which was higher than her husband’s income a lot of. This greatly improved her family status, and her husband and family even took the initiative to do housework for her.
Kajul, a girl from Ocha Village, her brother accidentally took a small video of her driving a tractor, but unexpectedly became popular
The application and popularization of the mobile Internet has enabled ordinary girls like her to have a wonderful connection with the outside world. Perhaps no girl comes with the mission of subverting stereotypes, but this incident has won them respect and changed their destiny.
I was shooting on a green train from Gansu to Beijing
In 2020, our team’s work photos
The charm of records is that they can accidentally break into a journey of life and collide with the fate of others.
Yiwu Live Village, the live broadcast internet celebrities
The live broadcast tutors are training students from all over the country
In the Beixiazhu Village of Yiwu, Zhejiang, known as the “first village of China’s live broadcast internet celebrities,” I really feel the coming of the era of live broadcast for all people. More than 5,000 grassroots internet celebrities gathered in one village. In order to make a hit video, a female factory owner even floated in the lake with an inflatable mattress to make a joke, endorsing her own products.
The subversion of new things and the ups and downs of individual fate have always been one of my long-term creative directions. I tried to make a systematic record.
Yiwu Live Village, people selling goods live
In 2020, I will return to Beixiazhu Village, Yiwu. The epidemic has brought changes to all walks of life, and live broadcasting is no exception, but there are still entrepreneurs who continue to come to Yiwu to join the live broadcast army.
Fortunately, we survived the impact of the epidemic
On the eve of the Spring Festival, the new crown epidemic broke out. Unable to travel, many of our planned shooting at the beginning of the year were also shelved. The members of the studio were at a loss. Later we decided that since there was no chance to go to the core area, we would do our best to record the present.
On the night of February 3, 2020, empty streets of Guangzhou
On the eighth day of the first month, I went out to shoot for the first time, when Guangzhou was an empty city. On the usually congested downtown roads, only takeaways walked through the roads, the bustling shopping malls were empty, and physical shops were closed.
One of my favorite photos is a pedestrian bridge that I have walked countless times in the past. In the evening, the lights of the flyover were on as usual, but there was no one on the bridge. Everything felt magical. I should remember this scene for a lifetime.
Silent pedestrian bridge, night is approaching, lights are on
A female takeaway rider walks through an empty street
The epidemic fluctuated, but it finally got better, and we started to travel on business to film.
Finally, we have the opportunity to go to Wuhan to shoot a short film about the community’s fight against the epidemic. At night, I took a ferry to Hankou River Beach. The ferry was crowded and the familiar fireworks returned.
On October 23, 2020, people relaxing at night on the Hankou River Beach in Wuhan
Tourists on the riverside
“A pure content creator has never been an opportunist.” This is the commandment I gave myself when I quit my job at the age of 30 and started a business. The so-called opportunity is nothing but the practice of thinking and thinking for a long time, and the superposition of countless thoughts. Two years later, I am not convinced that those thoughts that are even paranoid to some extent,is it right or not. But at least, I rushed on the road, saw the wider world outside the grid, and did what I thought was worthwhile.
This article is from WeChat official account:Guyu Image-Tencent News (ID: ihuozhe), photography & writing & caption: pixel notes Lin Hongxian, editor: Steven Che, Zhou An