Wang Tingting (born in 1986 in Kunming, Yunnan province) dreamt to discover new worlds. At the age of 18, she left her hometown to migrate to Shanghai and afterwards to Montpellier in southern France. Wang’s background is rather atypical: she first studied sociology at the East China Normal University in Shanghai (2004), then completed a BA in ethnology at the Université Montpellier III (2009), and finally graduated in 2013 from the Parisian photography school called EFET (École photo et Formation à la Photographie).
Her talent was immediately recognized as she had just graduated when she received the Picto award for Young fashion photography (Prix Picto de la Jeune Photographie de Mode) in 2013, notably for her series “Illusions.” On this occasion she created a hand-made book, which attested her refined approach to graphic design and craftsmanship.
Reluctant to restrain her practice within the boundary of photography, she has been rethinking the medium by creating works that appear at the junction of photography, drawing, and graphic design. Wang has indeed developed a particular relationship with craftsmanship, inasmuch as her photographic works always involve sophisticated printing on a variety of papers that enhances the textural and modelling effects. The variety of her series demonstrate that she convincingly examines disparate genres, such as fashion, still life, portraiture through a rather conspicuous pictorial approach.




Photography Friday is a regular feature from Shanghaiist in association with Photography of China, Marine Cabos’s fantastic platform about photography and photographers in China.