Niu Weiyu (; January 1927 – 3 June 2020) was a Chinese photojournalist whose career started in the 1940s with coverage of the
Chinese Communist Party's wartime experiences and continued after 1949. She is praised for her photographs of ordinary workers and ethnic groups, and as one of the few women in photography, she specialized in female images.
Niu was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Photographers Association. Her husband,
Gao Fan
Gao , or Gawgaw/Kawkaw, is a city in Mali and the capital of the Gao Region. The city is located on the River Niger, east-southeast of Timbuktu on the left bank at the junction with the Tilemsi valley.
For much of its history Gao was an i ...
(1922-2004) was also a wartime and post-1949 photographer.
[Lin Qi]
A life in pictures
" China Daily (June 13, 2017)
Life and career
Niu Weiyu was born in
Tanghe,
Henan in January 1927. In 1945, Niu entered
Counter-Japanese Military and Political University, and in 1947 became an officer in the Political Department of the Liberated Area. She became a photographer attached to the
Eighth Route Army
The Eighth Route Army (), officially known as the 18th Group Army of the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China, was a group army under the command of the Chinese Communist Party, nominally within the structure of the Chinese ...
, then turned to news photography for North China Pictorial and other journals.
After 1949, she became head of the
Xinhua News Agency department of photography until her retirement in 1982. In 1975, as the
Cultural Revolution was coming to an end, she went to Tibet, traveling by jeep from
Chengdu
Chengdu (, ; Simplified Chinese characters, simplified Chinese: 成都; pinyin: ''Chéngdū''; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively Romanization of Chi ...
.
Niu died on 3 June 2020, at the age of 93.
References
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Notes
External links
Light and Shadow Life"Old photos of the Tibetan-inhabited areas." Exhibition of Niu and Gan Fan's photos of Tibet.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Niu, Weiyu
1927 births
2020 deaths
20th-century Chinese photographers
Chinese communists
War photographers
Artists from Henan
People from Nanyang, Henan
Chinese photojournalists
20th-century Chinese journalists
20th-century Chinese women journalists
Chinese women photographers