TITLE: Burning North

I lived in Beijing for more than a decade, but I didn't really know it, and photography became an opportunity for me to explore the metropolis. Exploration means adventure, from a safe place to an unknown field, and such movement is not only in the physical space, but also in the spiritual and emotional evolution. I keep roaming in the city, capturing the connection between people and the city, thinking about how urban space shapes people's lifestyle and desires, and whether there is another world hidden under the surface of daily life. When the stream of reality that is constantly dissipating and reassembling becomes a photograph, I arrive at the other side of reality.

AUTHOR: ChengLong/成龙 Zhang/张 (China)

Zhang Chenglong is a filmmaker and photographer. I was born in 1987 in Liaoyang, a small industrial city in northeastern China. When I was young, I rarely lived with my parents. I was always supported by other families and had no friends to play with. My lonely childhood gave me time to observe my surroundings, and I lived in that small city for 16 years.

During high school, I attended an art high school and studied theater performance for three years, which was my first exposure to art and theater. As a dramatic actor, he performed Shakespeare's plays on stage and studied the theories of Stanislavski and Brecht. Although many of them were beyond my comprehension, they filled my empty teenage years and had a profound impact on my later learning and creation.

I graduated from the Communication University of China, majoring in cinematography and film directing. These learning experiences shaped my approach to photography. In my street photos, I am not limited to using a certain "style" or "genre" to frame everything I feel, which may not fit here, but rather to explore the unique temperament of the city I live in, which is existential, through intuition and feeling as tentacles. I pay more attention to the characters themselves, to our emotions, conditions, and mysteries. I believe these are the eternal themes of photography, the silent images that can change us and the world. My current career is in film production and photography, living and working in Beijing.

October This year, I started submitting my work to international photo competitions. At present, I have been selected to participate in the Street Photography Masters Exhibition at the Glasgow Photo Gallery in the UK,
Won the 2023 AAP Magazine Street Photography Award in the United States and was one of 25 winners published in print issue 36 of AAP Magazine
Selected for the Athens Black and White Photography Competition, it will be exhibited in Athens, Greece in 2024.
Selected for the Italian loosen Art Gallery's "Into the Night" exhibition in Rome.
Selected for the Spanish Dodho magazine
Won the French PISPA Street Photography Awards Silver medal in the Winter Group Photo category, silver Medal in the Winter Single Photo category and bronze medal in the Street Portrait category. 2024 Exhibition at Xposure Photography Festival, Sharjah.
Won the Silver Prize in the Professional group of the 2023 Tokyo International Photo Contest
I will continue my street photography projects and try more types of photography creation.