Qiubi finds her niche snapping shots of rural lives, polar excursions, starry nights

Adorning the walls of airport rail links and subway lines in Beijing are thousands of captivating photos. What many may not know is that over 1,000 of these images are credited to a single person: talented photographer Wang Wenyan, better known by her pen name, Qiubi.

Covering a range of subjects — from documentary work and aweinspiring pictures of landscapes to snapshots of wildlife in Antarctica and images from the intriguing realm of astrophotography — her photos showcase her broad interests and remarkable versatility.

"I'm mainly a documentary and Antarctica photographer," Qiubi told China Daily. "Astrophotography is more like a hobby born from my childhood fantasies about the galaxy and cosmos."

Birth of a shutterbug

Born in 1987 in Sanming, Fujian province, Qiubi said that she got her first Canon compact camera, a gift from her father when she was in university. She received her first single-lens reflex camera when she started working for an automobile manufacturer's overseas marketing department in Xiamen, Fujian, after graduating from university in 2008.

She used it to take photos for the company's newsletters.

She worked with the company for four years, during which she met her future husband. They married and moved to Beijing. In order to further study in France, she attended a French training course at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

During a 2013 outing with friends in the capital, she discovered her passion for photography while capturing candid moments of her friends' children with her camera. Impressed by her photos, her friends said it seemed she had a knack for the art.

Their praise didn't surprise Qiubi, who had shown artistic prowess in her younger years. "I used to love and excel in painting during my school days," she said. "I even contemplated studying fine arts for a while."

Still, she was motivated by their encouragement and decided to make something of her gift.

The photos she took of the children led to her receiving her first commercial photography commission. More commissions followed, propelling her from a part-time to a full-time commercial photographer.

"My focus wasn't on typical commercial portraits but on capturing candid, documentary-style family moments," she said.

Her distinct style and artful approach began to attract more attention. In 2014, she received an invitation to document an international company's environmental project in a village nestled at the base of the Qilian Mountains in Gansu province. Immersing herself in the village life for a week, she trained her lens to capture images depicting how modern cooking stoves had transformed the villagers' traditional way of life.

Following the success of the project, she received more commissions from various entities, including corporations, nonprofit organizations and universities, all seeking her photographic expertise for their diverse projects.

These projects, ranging from environmental and biodiversity conservation and agricultural heritage protection to women's empowerment, climate change and sustainable community development, have brought her to remote communities in China and abroad, especially in areas inhabited by many of the country's ethnic groups.

Understanding people

While working on these projects, Qiubi said she developed a passion for documenting the stories of grassroots communities and their residents. "One of the most challenging targets in photography is people," Qiubi said. "While working on my documentary projects, I often consider myself not just a photographer, but also a social worker."

When she approached her subjects, she preferred to keep her camera hidden in her bag initially. She would engage them in conversations, spend time getting to know them and partake in their daily lives before even thinking about taking a single photo. Her approach was to immerse herself in their stories before capturing them through her lens. "At first, I tried to build an emotional connection with my subjects," she said. "My gender has often been one of my advantages."

To complete a project, she once stayed in a village in the Garze Tibetan prefecture of Sichuan province for two months, accompanying villagers on their farm chores and making a pilgrimage to their sacred mountains. Sometimes she had to sleep in yak pens on alpine meadows.

Her experiences have deepened her understanding of the environmental difficulties that rural people contend with, she said.

One particular trip etched deeply in Qiubi's memory was a journey to the Jiatang Grassland in the Yushu Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Qinghai province.

It was late spring when she found herself engulfed in a massive sandstorm while visiting the local herdsmen. The fierce winds, laden with heavy sand and hail, shook her vehicle violently, causing her tripods to topple outside. As she struggled to retrieve her cameras, the wind became so intense that she found herself unable to return to the safety of her car, feeling as if she was stranded in a desert wasteland.

"It was a stark reminder of the negative impact of climate change and environmental degradation on the area," she said. "To me, it was just a singular experience, but for the nomadic herders there, it was probably a regular struggle."

Another experience that has had a lingering impact on her was her project at Wangjinzhuang village in Shexian county, Hebei province.

Nestled at the foot of the Taihang Mountains, the area faced severe droughts due to its rocky terrain and arid climate. To eke out a living in the harsh environment, the locals resorted to carving terraced fields out of the mountains. They upheld age-old traditions of seed preservation and sustainable farming practices, maintaining their traditional way of life for over seven centuries.

Documenting an agricultural heritage protection project conducted by a professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing, Qiubi made over 10 visits to the village over three years, witnessing firsthand the resilience and wisdom of the locals in harmonizing with nature.

"By planting different crops on their fields, the Wangjinzhuang villagers have managed to protect 171 traditional varieties," Qiubi said.

Despite their adaptive practices, she said, the community faced unprecedented challenges in recent years. From severe droughts in 2019 to devastating floods in 2021 and plummeting crop yields due to prolonged cold spells in 2022, the villagers grappled with the harsh realities of climate change.

With her profound understanding of issues such as environmental conservation and climate change, Qiubi was invited to curate a photo exhibition during the first part of the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP 15) in Kunming, Yunnan province, in 2021, and share her insights during the second part of the conference in Montreal, Canada, in 2022.

Her photos depicting climate change adaptation were exhibited in Hong Kong last year, and that same year, she curated an exhibition on the topic for a charitable foundation in Beijing.

"I use my cameras and lenses to document various social issues, and through my curating, I expect more people to gain deeper insight into these issues," Qiubi said. "Sparking people's awareness on some pressing social issues was a meaningful step toward inspiring tangible change."

She said that she has curated one or two photo exhibitions a year for the past several years.

Going down, looking up

In 2019, Qiubi was invited to go down to Antarctica for a commercial shooting project. "I immediately fell in love with the continent," she said. "Everything is so beautiful — the landscapes, the wildlife, poplar days and the night sky."

After returning to Beijing in November, she started looking for a convenient way to take photos of Antarctica freely. She soon decided to apply for jobs offered by some international polar exploration companies.

Qiubi sent her resume to a Danish expedition company, and in December 2019, she was hired to be its Antarctica photographer. The company can use the photos she takes while working for commercial purposes, and she serves as a photographic guide for the tourists visiting the continent via the company.

"I'm probably one of the very few Chinese women working on polar expeditions in Antarctica as a photographer," she said.

She has worked for the company every year since 2020. Each year, she makes multiple trips to the continent from October to February for the seasonal job, accompanying one tour group after another. "I spend one and a half or two months working in Antarctica," she said.

As the mother of a 7-year-old boy, Qiubi said she usually takes a break from her work to visit her family during Spring Festival.

"He is a very confident boy and has gotten used to my long absences from his life from time to time," she said of her son.

These days, she said she has video chats with him almost every day while working in Antarctica.

Qiubi said her coworkers have enriched her experience. "I've had the privilege of collaborating with colleagues from a variety of countries, many of whom are experts in various fields," she said. "Working with them has been a profound learning experience, broadening my perspective on the world and life itself."

Aside from her polar journeys, Qiubi has been looking up to the skies for photographic inspiration.

While traveling through Tacheng, Yunnan province, in 2014, she discovered a newfound passion for stargazing. Driving along a mountainous path, she was captivated by the breathtaking sight of the stars suspended in the night sky.

"It had been years since I last saw the galaxy," she said. "That night's spectacle transported me back to the starlit nights of my childhood when I lived at my grandparents' home in the countryside."

She began taking photos of the night sky, which has helped her reconnect with her childhood memories. "Astrophotography has evolved into more than just a hobby — it's become an obsession for me," she said. "It satisfies my insatiable curiosity about the unknown realms of the universe and fuels my imagination of advanced civilizations beyond our own."

Driven by this passion, she once dedicated six consecutive nights to capturing the celestial wonders in the wilderness of Yushu, Qinghai. Reflecting on that experience, she said, "I later learned that a Tibetan herder had been badly injured by a brown bear roaming the very area where I had immersed myself in capturing star photos."

The realization sent a shiver down her spine as she contemplated the proximity of such a formidable creature during her nocturnal photography sessions.

Qiubi reflected on how her numerous expeditions over the years have profoundly reshaped her outlook on the world.

"While working with a company, I used to be ambitious and focus on targets," she said. "However, through my photographic journeys, I have learned to embrace a more serene approach, finding joy in the journey itself rather than thinking solely on the end results."