Z.W.Shen is a professional photographer whose practice bridges documentary photojournalism and artistic creation.
His photographic career started in 1980s China when he formerly taught Photography and Art Critics at China Textile University (now Donghua University) and worked as a freelance photo journalist for some mainstream and serious newspapers in China, which enjoyed the most circulation nationwide.
1980s ~ 2000 is a period that witnessed great social transformation in China. Shen observed the historical change with a composed and perceptive eye. He has photographed numerous culturally significant artists and public figures, including Liu Haisu (one of the most famous contemporary painters in China, awards winner in Italy, France, UK, US...), Chen Yifei (celebrated modern artisit/director), Nian Weisi (five-times head coach of Chinese Football Team, former president of Chinese Football Association), as well as some former state leaders.
As a journalist, he was always on the scene and documented the pivotal incidents.
In early 1980s, shortly after the national adoption of Household Responsibility System in China, a replacement of Collective Farming, Shen went to Yunnan province documenting the practice in agriculture, observing how the practice sprawled nationwide and drastically swept the country economically; he reported the reconstruction after the devastating 1987 forest fire in Great Khingan with Chinese jounalism delegation; etc.
Since 2000, Shen has been devoted in multi-cultural domains, leveraging his impact and performance in art, media and education.
A Sino-French fashion college was initiated and built up by him in Shanghai. He orchestrated a grand meeting in Shanghai University attended by supermodel Naomi Campbell who delivered a speech there. He was also the man behind a couple of major fashion events. For instance, in 2023 and 2025, he was invited by the provincial governments to contrive fashion shows respectively at an over-500-year mansion in Huangshan and in the desert in far west China.
Meanwhile, he was invited to write columns for the local newspapers, where he gave critics on other artists’ paintings and photos, as well as published his own photographic work. Shen has as well published multiple photography monographs and theoretical works both in China and the United States.
Thanks to his crossover involvement, Shen has gradually steered his photographic practice to a new direction.
He has based himself in New York where he was engaged in photographying various social and cultural events, like NYC Bodypainting Day, annual Dance Parade NYC, St. Patrick’s Day Parade; he has been equally active among the street performers and vendors in Times Square and Washington Square Park, capturing the living status of all walks of life……
Being a tenured professor at MOD’ART Paris and a visiting scholar at UCC, he has kept wide and constant contact with European artists and educators, which in turn inspires his photographic creation in a rather interdisciplinary and inclusive approach.
Deeply rooted in traditional, journalistic and academic photography practice, Shen has always been a steady believer in documenting the truth. He is particularly specialized in group portrait.
While transitioning from photojournalist to art photographer, he is persistently exploring the creative boundary. Manipulation with light and shade, carefully constructed composition, probe of materiality by juxtaposition and texturising, focus on the narrative elements and the orchestration of them, are all his distinctive visual language.
Standing as a quiet and resolute witness within the transition of contemporary photography, Shen’s ambition of pusuing the universal beauty visually, emotionally and morally remains unchanged.