Just as Chinese painters of many centuries ago focused their art on the natural world, so do modern photographers capture the varied images of the Asian landscape. Photographic images of Asia reveal the photographer's response to the varied cultures and environments of the orient.
According to an ancient Confucian text, "Nature is vast, deep, high intelligent, infinite and eternal." The Asian landscape is uniquely beautiful, but it is more than that. Its vastness is a reflection of eternity, and its balance is a measure of the order of the universe.
The interaction of mountains and water is at the heart of Chinese landscape; one element does not exist without each other. Asian travel photography reveals the constant interplay of the flow of water and the solid mass of mountain rock, feeding the plants and animals that rely on this eternal relationship.
Travel photography in the Orient depicts not only the natural environment, but also the built environment and the people who inhabit it. Steep mountain paths winding from the hills greet the photographer willing to venture off the beaten path. Elaborate villas exist in remote mountain villages. Women still work in kitchens and serve meals, while children ride astride water buffalo. A teacher instructs a child while the father sits nearby. Travelers start their journey on the twisted mountain paths.
The architecture of Asia is instrumental to the built environment. The ardent adventure photographer may very well find two-court structures in remote areas. These classic buildings have a public front gate and kitchen at one end and a private family court in a separate wing. The photographer is likely to find such a building, with its sharp lines, integrated into the landscape of rugged rock and earth.
The Great Wall of China may be the most magnificent example of man's influence over the natural environment. This ancient structure fits into the landscape as if it were always there.
But the photographer of images of Asian need not be confined to scenes from the past. Images of the twenty-first century China, for example, show the newly wealthy nation moving at rapid speed into the modern era. Automobiles replace the traditional bicycles and create traffic jams and pollution. Buildings designed by the most esteemed contemporary architects in the world replace small courtyard homes in cities, and rise high into the sky. The cultural environment encompasses massive sculptures of the past along with modern technology. The photographer in a garden in the city may spot an old man carefully writing Chinese characters on the sidewalk with just a wet brush as a teenager talks excitedly on a cell phone.
The Orient today is a land of harmonies and contrasts. A photographer with a quick and sensitive eye can capture the complex images of Asia, with its tributes to ancient times and its excitement over the future. Fine Asian travel photography gives viewers a window into this enormous and diverse continent, a region of the world most people will never see on their own.
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