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Zhuang Xueben (; 1909–1984) was one of China’s first ethnographic photographers. In the 1930s, he left his native Shanghai and travelled to western China to photograph the minority people in four provinces: Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Qinghai. During the almost ten years of ethnographic research, he took more than ten thousand photographs and wrote a vast amount of materials including research reports, travel notes, and journals. In 1941, he held a photographic exhibition on Xikang in several Chinese cities and about 200,000 people attended the exhibit. These photos and written materials have become a valuable source for anthropologists to the ethnic groups in western China.〔''Chen Feng De Li Shi Shun Jian'' 《尘封的历史瞬间》 (The World Forgotten by History) 2005: 12-17〕 ==Introduction== Zhuang Xueben was born in Shanghai in 1909. He left the city in 1930 and began to photograph the minority regions of western China. He mainly travelled in the provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu, and Qinghai. Although he accompanied the 9th Panchen Lama on his journey to Tibet, he was never able to enter Tibet because of political difficulties between Tibet and China. He lived for long periods of time with the 16 minority groups he photographed, each of which spoke a different language. Many of his subjects were Tibetan Buddhists. The first trip took him nine months. One of his goals was to make the Chinese world aware of these peoples and lands so they would come to value them. He photographed them with great dignity and empathy. Unlike so many “ethnographic” or “anthropological” artists, Zhuang Xueben was able to close the distance between himself and his subjects. He saw their beauty and recorded it. Although self-taught, he has an artist’s eye. He was aware of the importance and rigor of good art, and he wrote about the connection of art and science. He kept meticulous notes about his travels and his work. As Chinese art critic and writer Zhu Qi says, “Zhuang Xueben’s ‘anthropological’ photography is comparable to any western photography of its kind in the last century.” These works from the 1930s represent one of the richest periods of Zhuang Xueben’s photographic work. At a time when China itself was in turmoil, caught between the Japanese invasion on the east and north and British dominance in Tibet, the western border regions of China were vital to China’s security. They were also virtually unknown lands to most Chinese, and the government itself. Curious, perhaps deeply patriotic, Zhuang Xueben, as a young man, was conscious of the importance of these regions and their fascination. Due to the Cultural Revolution, Zhuang Xueben’s work lay unseen and unknown for many years. Recently, Chinese scholars have re-discovered his work, and Zhuang Xueben’s son, Zhuang Wenjun, has been instrumental in retrieving and preserving his father’s work.〔''Zhuang Xueben Quan Ji'' 《庄学本全集》 (The Complete Works of Zhuang Xueben) 2009: 4-12〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Zhuang Xueben」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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