Initial ideas and inspirations for Body and Object Project

Song Chao 1979 –

Song Chao is a Chinese photographer who grew up in a coal-mining community. In 1997 he began working in the coal mine. He was uneducated, but in 2001 as an amateur photographer, and working 12 hours shifts down the mine, he set up a white background and using the natural light near the exit of the mine, he began taking images of his fellow workers. As well as the miners, his photography focuses on their families and the community and landscape that surrounds them. The images portray a powerful and personal portrait of life within a small mining community.

Chao’s series Miners has been compared to the work of Richard Avedon, the American Portrait photographer, but Song was unaware of any western photography or photographers when he began taking the portraits. His black and white images quickly achieved fame and his work now is displayed in galleries around the world.

His images appeal to me as the workers are shown unwashed and in their working clothes. I can take inspiration from the way the miners are portrayed when I begin my ‘Body and Object’ project as I shall need to show my choice of subject in their working environment, wearing their everyday working clothes.