Yes, The River Knows - Huangpu River 黄浦江: 河知道
How do we look at a river as landscape, as history, or as a living presence that remembers more than we do?
Yes, the River Knows Huangpu River is the second chapter in Wan Chaofan’s ongoing river project, following his award-winning Yes, the River Knows Arakawa. In this new volume, Wan turns toward the Huangpu River in Shanghai, a river of his homeland, though not of his hometown. This subtle distance becomes crucial. It allows him to observe with clarity, neither entirely inside nor fully outside.
Working with a medium format FUJI GX617 panoramic camera, Wan adopts an expansive horizontal frame. The format does more than widen the view it transforms the act of looking. Each image unfolds like a handscroll, stretching across time and space. Though technically segmented, the river appears continuous, inviting the viewer into an experience akin to walking slowly along its banks.
As Professor Gu Zheng observes, this is not a visual introduction to the Huangpu. It is a process of inquiry. Photography here becomes negotiation between photographer and subject, between city and river, between nature and society. Wan does not document the river; he converses with it.
Placed in dialogue with his earlier Arakawa series recipient of the New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award, the Miki Jun Award, and the Sagamihara Emerging Photographer Award, the Huangpu work reveals how rivers are shaped by distinct ecological and social conditions. The contrast between Tokyo’s northern outskirts and Shanghai’s dense urban landscape exposes how water reflects political, economic, and cultural realities.
Through walking, waiting, and observing, Wan searches for metaphors of the modern city within the river’s flow. The quiet terrain and shifting natural light create a restrained visual rhythm contemplative yet precise.
Yes, the River Knows — Huangpu River is not merely about geography. It is about coexistence. It asks how photography might create space for dialogue between humans and the environments they inhabit, and how rivers, in their persistence, hold stories beyond our immediate perception.
For collectors of contemporary Asian photography, scholars of visual culture, and readers drawn to long-form, conceptually rigorous landscape practice, this volume stands as both continuation and expansion of a significant body of work.
Language: English, Chinese & Japanese
Format: Hardcover | 84 pages
Dimensions: 370 x 175mm | 890g
Publication Year: 2025
ISBN: 978-4-908851-11-7
Limited to 500 copies
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