Recording China through a lens: An interview with Yann Layma

A photo of Yann Layma taken in 1988 in Sanjiang Dong autonomous county in South China's Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.[Photo taken by Na Risong /Inter Art Center/Gallery]

Would you please tell us a bit about your future projects? What are you working on these days?

I would love to continue to take photos in China but I am not optimistic about the future of this business so I am now working as a salesman for rich Chinese people to buy castles in France. Besides, as I have a passion for butterflies which I have collected since my childhood, I would love to make a world butterfly museum somewhere. I am now also working on a book called Butterfly's Art but I don't feel I am a photographer anymore.

You have said in an interview that you seldom see Chinese photographers’ works appear out of China, especially those stories that reflect the Chinese contemporary life. Sometimes when you came upon a few of them, you found them “bad”. Would you please give some suggestions to the Chinese photographers who want to display or sell their photos outside China, for example in terms of photo taking and promoting?

It is good to take photos every day of everything that portrays reality even if those photos have fewer and fewer buyers. It is good to study the masters of international magazines and books as much as possible and try to do as well as they do. I have met really good Chinese photographers whose work can be successful abroad like Lu Guang, Yin Liqin, Chen Bixin, Li Yuxiang...I always try to help them to improve their work and promote it abroad.

Documentary photography is suffering a time of big changes and no one knows what it is going to become.