Jiuliang was born in Anqiu, China in 1976, and graduated from the Communication University of China before working as a freelance photographer based in Beijing. Before completing his series on waste in China, his previous projects focused on Chinese traditions and worshiping gods and spirits. But in the year of 2009 he turned his gaze to the garbage crisis surrounding Beijing, where he visited more than 460 landfills around the city and took 10,000 photographs. He also produced a 76 minute documentary called 'Beijing besieged by Garbage' that received extensive Chinese media coverage. For his project he won a gold award as outstanding artist of the year at the 2009 Lianzhou International Photography Festival. The documentary which I have attached below runs the viewer through Jiuliang's photographic journey of documenting the certain problems with the amount of waste Beijing is creating and how they don't know how to handle it apart from dumping it into one of the hundreds of landfills that surround the city.
This image above shows the areas that Jiuliang visited on his photographic journey, it also shows how Beijing is surrounded by waste and thus provides the viewer a very visual understanding at how bad this waste problem has got. I think this is a really good way to start off his project, due to it being an easy way to see the scale of the problem.
The first and third images show his next photographic technique which show the scale of the problem. He produced large format landscape photographs of all the land fills surrounding Beijing, because this gives the viewer a good sense of the scale. The reason large format cameras work well is that they capture high levels of detail due to the large format. He took these landscape images on a tripod so he could capture these scenes using a high f/stop number which then gives the image a large depth of field meaning everything in focus from the fore to the background. I think I will have to remember this technique of using a high f/stop number for when it comes to my images.
Like the second image shows in this group of three he also captures images of a much closer scene, this helps to increase the idea of the impact this waste is having on a smaller scale, but when put along side the landscape images this shows the total affect of Beijings waste problem.
Wang Jiuliang used different techniques including documentary, google maps, large format landscapes and close ups to portray to the viewer the problems that Beijing is facing with its waste management. I think his images like Hoyland's who photographed the Maldives are really ore-inspiring and work well as visual information for waste problems.
The idea of Beijing being surrounded by waste and landfills began my thinking about my home city of Coventry, and whether it had anything compareable to the likes of Beijing. One can imagine waste being a problem in far away countries such as Beijing or the Maldives but I wonder what its like in England. I will use these two photographers as the first inspiration for my project that focuses on waste within England.