Niu Weiyu (; January 1927 – 3 June 2020) was a Chinese photojournalist whose career started in the 1940s with coverage of the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

'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 (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 Tanghe County is administered by the prefecture-level city of Nanyang, in the southwest of Henan province, People's Republic of China, bordering Hubei province to the south. Its ancient name was Tangzhou (). The county consists of 3 subdistrict ...

Henan Henan; alternatively Honan is a province in Central China. Henan is home to many heritage sites, including Yinxu, the ruins of the final capital of the Shang dynasty () and the Shaolin Temple. Four of the historical capitals of China, Lu ...

in January 1927. In 1945, Niu entered

Counter-Japanese Military and Political University Counter-Japanese Military and Political University (), also commonly known as Kàngdà () and Kangri Junzheng University (), was a comprehensive public university located in Yan'an, Shaanxi, the headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party during ...

, 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 titled as the List of Army Groups of the National Revolutionary Army, 18th Group Army, was a Field army, group army nominally under the banner of the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Republic of Ch ...

, then turned to news photography for North China Pictorial and other journals. After 1949, she became head of the

Xinhua News Agency Xinhua News Agency (English pronunciation: ),J. C. Wells: Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd ed., for both British and American English or New China News Agency, is the official state news agency of the People's Republic of China. It is a ...

department of photography until her retirement in 1982. In 1975, as the

Cultural Revolution The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a Social movement, sociopolitical movement in the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). It was launched by Mao Zedong in 1966 and lasted until his de ...

was coming to an end, she went to Tibet, traveling by jeep from

Chengdu Chengdu; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, previously Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu. is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a ...

. Niu died on 3 June 2020, at the age of 93.

References

Notes

External links

Light and Shadow Life
"Old photos of the Tibetan-inhabited areas." Exhibition of Niu and Gan Fan's photos of Tibet. * {{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