The strength of Song Yongping's photographs lies in their depiction of the ordinary people of China, the inhabitants of secondary cities nationwide caught, in recent decades, in the cross-current if social change. The images are of his parents, and their story is sadly common to a large portion of the population, as it struggles to adjust to a new economic climate that is, of necessity, moving away from the socialist ideals upon which the People's Republic was founded.

　　Song Yongping was born in Taiyuan Shanxi Province, bue west inland form Beijing, Traditionally a region of war-lords, yellow earth plateaus, cave dwellers, coalmining, and heavy industry, it has an image of being brute and harsh. Although it is not all poor, the cultural and social advance is educational and career opportunities, increasingly so since` opening and reform,' introduced by Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. This is where Song Yongping's parents settled in the 1950s, and where as a dutiful elder son, he too would make his home.

　　Song Yongping is a talented painter, his skills even more proficient than those of his younger brother Song Yonghong who, being the second son, was able to settle on Beijing after graduating form the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts in 1992. There he joined forces with the group of painters that created the school of Cynical Realism. This school, together with Political Pop, was the first that became known to foreign audiences, and it also encouraged the idea of a Chinese avant-garde movement. Song Yongping did leave Taiyuan to study painting in Tianjin, a port city some 250 kilometers east of Beijing, but his parent's health required his returned to Taiyuan to care for them. His experience though the ensuing years illustrates the challenges that would-be contemporary artists living in the provinces faced in maintaining a profile and communicating with the art world in China and abroad. Even with the assistance of his brother, opportunities for presenting his work were limited. The frustration this engendered fed into Song Yongping's paintings, which became suffused with shocking imagery and a sharp sense of impotence. By late 1997, feeling isolated and alone, he was almost ready to give up. His parents' health had deteriorated rapidly, making large demands on his time. It seemed reasonable to focus on them and rethink his future at a more opportune moment.

　　AS he spent increasing amounts of time with his parents, Song Yongping's sense of personal crisis was consumed by empathy for his parents' plight and desperation at their resignation to just "fading away." So he began to photograph them, initially with the aim of preserving their precious last moments, but as he reflected upon their life, he became angry-it seemed as if society were abandoning people like his parents, and that offered a powerful subject for his art. Neither parent had enjoyed an easy life. Both were simple people, his mother a worker, his father a low-ranking officer in the People's Liberation Army. Almost immediately after their marriage, works assignments separated them, and Song Yongping and his brother were brought up largely was able to return, but within a few months he had suffered a brain tumor that kept him home sick from that moment on.

　　"My parents believed they had contributed to society, willingly and to the best of their ability. When my father was sick, my mother worked all hours to earn money to pay his medical bills. But then when she got sick, too, their insurance could not cover the costs. My brother and I naturally took on the responsibility, but my parents were distraught. Neither wanted to be a burden and when they sensed that was what they had become, they literally gave up, refusing to leave their room, willing the end to come soon. For me it was soul-destroying, there was nothing I could do… but watch. That's when I began taking photographs." Song Yongping photographed his parents from 1998 until their deaths in 2001. The pictures shown here represent two series he selected from the thousands of images as still being too harrowing for him to look at. They are glimpse into the lives of the masses caught up in the tidal wave of change in China today.

作者：Song,Yongping