Published : 2024-06-03
On June 3, 2020, Niu Weiyu, a lifelong achievement award winner of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles (中國文學藝術界聯合會), a renowned photographer, and a former Xinhua News Agency photographer as well as the first director of the China Women Photographers Association, passed away in Beijing. She was 93 years old.
Niu Weiyu was born in 1927 and was a native of Henan Province. She began to engage in photography in 1948 and had served as a photographer for North China Pictorial (華北畫報), Southwest Pictorial (西南畫報), and News Photography Bureau.
Niu had also worked as a photographer for the Xinhua News Agency and served as head of photography departments in North China, Beijing, and Hong Kong divisions.
As one of the early female photographers in New China, Niu Weiyu travelled across China during her 40-year photography career.
From the Tibetan Plateau and the foot of Tianshan Mountains to the north and south of the country, she took numerous widely circulated masterpieces.
She traversed snowy mountains and grasslands four times to Aba, twice to Xinjiang for themed shootings and spent eight months photographing in Xizang (formerly known as Tibet) in 1975.
Niu Weiyu’s camera recorded large amount of important news events and historical moments.
She created many well-known portrait works and took numerous pictures of the working life of people from all ethnic groups in the New China era, which formed an important part of Chinese photography history.
During her time as a Xinhua News Agency reporter, Niu Weiyu captured the scenes of leaders such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, Peng Dehuai, Ye Jianying, and He Long.
In terms of portrait photography, she had also photographed plenty of outstanding Chinese figures, such as mathematicians Hua Luogeng and Wu Wenjun, scientific leaders Qian Xuesen and Mao Yisheng, painters Qi Baishi, Jiang Zhaohe, and Huang Zhou, writers Guo Moruo, Lao She, Cao Jinghua, and Ding Ling, Peking Opera masters Mei Lanfang and Zhou Xinfang, musician Ma Sicong, dancer Dai Ailian, and "ironman" Wang Jinxi.
Each work was a testament to the times.
Besides grand figures of the time, ordinary workers from all ethnic groups in China were also the subjects in Niu Weiyu’s lens.
Women bus drivers, Tibetan ploughwomen, female university students labouring in the fields, female workers from Daqing oilfield, female militia in Fujian, and the first batch of female pilots in New China all came alive in her works, collectively composing the scenes of Chinese people creating history.
After retirement, Niu remained active in the photography industry. In March 1988, the China Art Museum held a solo exhibition for her.
In 2018, the China Art Museum held a joint photography exhibition for Gaofan and Niu Weiyu. The same year, Niu won the Lifelong Achievement Award for Photography from the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
