Film

Poet-Photographer Yan Ming: Adult Is a Wrinkled Child

Born in Dingyuan, Anhui in the 1970s, Yan Ming is widely known as a poet-photographer. Over more than a decade, he has traveled across China, photographing countless ordinary lives. Also a best-selling author, he published Adult Is a Wrinkled Child this year. We visited him in his hometown, where he told us: there are no adults in the world, only children who have grown wrinkles.

How does Yan Ming’s 2019 interview relate to the separate 2022 Yesterday’s Paradise feature?

This 2019 film records Xirui Huang’s team visiting photographer Yan Ming in his hometown. Adult Is a Wrinkled Child provides a route into his attention to ordinary lives and everyday poetry, developed through travelling, photographing and writing. A separate 2022 feature on Yesterday’s Paradise explores his black-and-white photography and later experiments with colour. The linked accounts document different stages of his practice rather than the same exhibition.

Transcript

Born in Dingyuan, Anhui in the 1970s, Yan Ming is widely known as a poet-photographer. Over more than a decade, he has traveled across China, photographing countless ordinary lives. Also a best-selling author, he published Adult Is a Wrinkled Child this year. We visited him in his hometown, where he told us: there are no adults in the world, only children who have grown wrinkles.

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