Photo exhibition hopes to raise awareness on Mogao Caves

Photographer Wu Jian has been focusing his lens on Mogao Caves, the UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Dunhuang, Northwest China's Gansu province, for over four decades.

Immersing himself in the trove of murals and painted sculptures for such a long period, he keeps in mind that the murals and sculptures were inspired by living people of the time they were created. Therefore, taking pictures of them should be artistic representation with light and shadow rather than rigid recording.

Such concept is well-presented at a photo exhibition launched at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing on Friday, featuring 50 selected works of Wu.

He said at the exhibition's opening ceremony that it's a display of part of his works taken at more than 40 cultural heritage sites along the Silk Road, including Gansu's Jinta Temple, and the Yungang and Longmen grottoes, respectively in Shanxi and Henan provinces.

Wu hopes that these photos can arouse people's reverence to ancient Silk Road, their appreciation for Chinese culture, and the awareness to inherit and promote fine traditional culture.

Su Bomin, director of the Dunhuang Academy, said that Wu's work has created a Silk Road cultural heritage image database and provided a precise and comprehensive atlas of the relics for academic study and cultural promotion.

The 60-year-old cameraman has been working for the Dunhuang Academy since 1981. The academy is known for research and preservation of the Mogao Caves and oversees several other grotto complexes along the Hexi Corridor, the main artery of the ancient Silk Road.

Wu is one of the key figures and earliest participants in the digitization endeavor to better preserve and facilitate the research into the art of the Mogao Caves since the 1980s, Fan Jinshi, honorary director of the academy, writes in preface of the exhibition.

So far, the academy has completed high-definition digital scanning of 290 caves of the Mogao Caves, panoramic roaming programs for 162 caves, and three-dimensional reconstruction of 45 painted sculptures and seven key relic sites, she adds.

The exhibition runs through Aug 15.