Jin Ping is not obsessed with technology. He does not cling to innovation, and does not care about being crowned with eternal glory in history of Chinese photography. But his Tibetan paper methods have significance for the Chinese photographic community.
Unlike the legions of documentary photographers in China, who try to parse today's most urgent questions about truth and reality, Jin has long been charmed with exploring new methods of image presentation.
Integrating a talent for aesthetics, the visual arts, and printing technology, the Chengdu-based documentary photographer Jin Ping has developed a distinctive representation method, a hybrid process using modern inkjet technology and an age-old Tibetan paper, thus making the image appear a music-like charm, mix of originality and modernity.
Conceptually, one of the most intriguing pieces Jin Ping has created in this medium was a recreation of a plate of 24 commemorative stamps issued in 1959 to mark the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of the People's Republic of China.
The original monochrome woodcut stamp shows Mao in a dark green uniform, standing on the gate tower of the Tiananmen Square as he proclaims the founding of the new China. The image frames an important historical moment when Mao held sway over China.
One of the first plates of the stamp was bought by a stamp collector named Yang Shaoming, the son of Yang Shangkun, who then held a senior position in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Shaoming had Mao autograph the plate of the stamps --- the three Chinese characters "Mao Ze Dong" were signed vertically across the plate, turning an otherwise ordinary plate of stamps into a piece of conceptual art.
In Jin Ping's representation, the powerful Mao looks warm and graceful. The fiber of the Tibetan paper underlying the digital image creates a special surface texture with complex characteristics that subdue the sharpness of Mao. The paper's rough grain makes the simple color relationships look rich without looking exaggerated.
