Accountable Beauty With Chen Man
Chen Man has been bending rules and augmenting reality at the forefront of Chinese fashion photography for over a decade. Her seductive, dreamy images in Vision magazine back in the early 2000s propelled her to fame and soon led to gigs with MAC Cosmetics, Elle, Vogue and Bazaar. In 2012, Chen worked with i-D magazine to create twelve covers for their “Year of the Dragon” issue, and the projects keep on coming. Employing themes like water, authenticity, love and Chinese culture, to name a few, Chen Man’s beautiful, frenetic and decidedly strange universe stirs the imagination with each new shot.
We talked with Chen at her multimedia company, Studio 6. Between fussing with a radioactive orange top, being blotted by assistants and sipping tea, she revealed a charismatic, self-assured young woman, conscious of her unique role, eager to tackle the world and her responsibility within it – bringing modernism to China and bringing China to the West. Here, Chen Man discusses changing mediums, art world acceptance, pioneering the Chinese fashion scene and about using the visual language she’s developed to change the world.
Chen Man online: http://www.chenmaner.com
Music: http://am444.com/
at 1:42 pm
Very cool. I loved her photographs
at 4:07 pm
Glad you dig it, Michael!
at 12:12 pm
Chen Man is totally my new favorite person. So far I’ve really loved how well all of you have managed to let the real character of the artists come through in their interviews. Everything seems incredibly genuine and real.
at 10:25 am
Thanks, Adarael! Chen Man (and everyone else we interviewed, for that matter) was a pleasure to talk with. We have more up our sleeve, you’ll see.