Chen Man

Chen Man is a Chinese visual artist. Her medium includes photography, graphic design, cinematography, and digital art. She also produces covers for fashion magazines and collaborates with major brands worldwide.

Chen’s choice of field within the area of photography was mainly style, beauty, fashion and her insistence upon perfected beauty. Her approach is first and foremost about taking total control of the images she creates; the motivation behind that controls being to achieve the ultimate in beauty. Not only has Man mastered cameras and computers, she has also mastered the seamless blend of her modern aesthetics with traditional Chinese culture into her work. This has led to people praising Man for assisting the evolution of China’s aesthetics and redefining Chinese beauty. To Man there are two ways of defining beauty and she finds “both sides of the coin beautiful. She believes in genuine beauty, “what feels real whether it’s an emotion, an image, a person or an artwork” and technological beauty, like the beauty of phones and computers. With the tendency to look abroad for inspirations, Man is hoping that her work will encourage people to rethink beauty and start looking “to China for inspiration.”

I want to take this image above apart and break down some key aspects of it. First of all, the colour red is the key colour here for sure, connecting with my project I also fitted the red background and red lipstick together as it just works so perfect. It gives the sexual but also romantic theme to the shoot. The model is stunning and there are no flaws with her face, the hand is behind her head and so we have the focal point of her face and a floral accessory attached to her side of her hair. I completely adore the shadow under her left eye because it gives it a mysterious sense of the subject, it makes the viewer think. Is there anything wrong with her eye? Is the eye real? Does she have a second eye brow? Lastly, I really enjoy looking at the texture of the glossy hair, the texture of the slick dress and the amazing tone of her face, the colour balance in this shot is just amazingly high standard. This shot really reminds me of the photoshoot I performed with my model in the studio. It’s the atmosphere of China, when you look at the photograph you can sense the Chinese colours, style and looks of the face. I want to take this image apart and break down some key aspects of it. First of all, the colour red is the key colour here for sure, connecting with my project I also fitted the red background and red lipstick together as it just works so perfect. It gives the sexual but also romantic theme to the shoot. The model is stunning and there are no flaws with her face, the hand is behind her head and so we have the focal point of her face and a floral accessory attached to her side of her hair. I completely adore the shadow under her left eye because it gives it a mysterious sense of the subject, it makes the viewer think. Is there anything wrong with her eye? Is the eye real? Does she have a second eye brow? Lastly, I really enjoy looking at the texture of the glossy hair, the texture of the slick dress and the amazing tone of her face, the colour balance in this shot is just amazingly high standard. This shot really reminds me of the photoshoot I performed with my model in the studio. It’s the atmosphere of China, when you look at the photograph you can sense the Chinese colours, style and looks of the face. 

Next I would like to break apart the construction of this image. I incredibly like the background, I can feel the texture of the soft material that is behind the model. The softness really connects with the models face, the sensitive feel and the insecure atmosphere. All the colours here really work well the white, pink, black and red. There is no clashing of colours, and that is really good because otherwise the shot would be too busy and there would be a lot of things going on in one shot. The facial emotion here is rather confusing because I don’t really know if she is delighted or emotionally wrecked. The one eye being squashed and the other is being a little opened could possibly mean she is scared, and she is peeking through one eye to not see what is in front of her. In my opinion she could be scared of us, the viewers and us looking at her, she could almost be shy or embarrassed. Overall the use of make-up also adds a lot of Chinese culture, Chinese favoured beautiful, petite women with pale skin, bright eyes and white teeth. Make up back then, by today’s standards, would be alarming. The typical look was bushy, sprawling eye brows, long slanted eyes, thick pouting lips and the expansive coating of rouge on the cheeks.

Lastly, I would like to say that Chen Man is incredible at what she is doing today and she really inspired me to perform my photoshoot. I definitely take to consideration the make-up style she uses on her models, to portray the inner beauty and glamour within a Chinese woman and to show Chinese tradition in a modern way.