Born in 1910 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China
Died in 2000 in Shanghai, China
Jin Shisheng, born Jin Jingchang, was originally from Wuyuan, Jiangxi. He was a pioneering figure in modern Chinese fine art photography and a celebrated professor at Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban Planning. He is also recognized as the founder of modern urban planning education in China and a pioneer in the field of Chinese modern urban planning.
Born into a Huizhou merchant family in Wuhan, Jin later moved to Yangzhou. From 1932 to 1937, he studied in the Department of Civil Engineering at Tongji University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in engineering. From 1938 to 1940, he received a scholarship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to study urban planning at Technische Universität Darmstadt, earning a Diplom-Ingenieur degree. He later served as a teaching assistant and engineer at the university. In 1946, he returned to Shanghai and worked as an engineer on the Urban Planning Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Public Works. In 1947, he began teaching at Tongji University. After the nationwide readjustment of colleges and universities in 1952, he became head of the Teaching and Research Section of Urban Planning in the Department of Architecture at Tongji University, a position he held for twenty-six years. From 1978 until his retirement in 1987, he served as head of the Urban Planning and Architecture Research Institute.
In his youth, Jin Shisheng was one of the pioneers of fine art photography in China. After receiving his first Kodak A3 camera at the age of twelve, photography became a lifelong passion. Over more than seventy years of photographic practice, he worked with different cameras, films, and techniques. He once described himself as “never without a camera, and my camera is always loaded,” a phrase that reflects the depth of his devotion to the medium. For Jin, photography was not merely a personal hobby, but a continuous pursuit of artistic exploration and innovation.
In 1932, Jin published photographs in Lin Loon magazine and four Qingdao landscapes in The Chinese Kodakery, around which time he began using the pen name Jin Shisheng. In 1936, at the age of twenty-five, he co-founded the influential photography magazine Flying Eagle with Feng Sizhi, Jiang Bingnan, and others, and served as its editor-in-chief. Over the course of two years, Flying Eagle published nineteen issues; the twentieth issue had been printed and was ready for distribution, but was destroyed by Japanese artillery fire. Scholars have described Flying Eagle as perhaps the finest photographic periodical of the Republican period. Its contributors included many of the leading art photographers of the time, such as Lang Jingshan, Zhang Yinquan, Wu Zhongxing, Liu Xucang, Lu Shifu, Chen Chuanlin, He Tiehua, Sha Fei, Yang Gongzan, Yang Ziyi, Ao Enhong, Wu Yinbo, as well as Jin Shisheng himself. Although Flying Eagle ceased publication after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in August 1937, its influence on the development of Chinese photography remains significant.
After studying in Germany, Jin’s photographic vision further expanded. Even during the difficult circumstances of the Second World War, he continued to explore the medium. After returning to Shanghai, he experienced the founding of the People’s Republic of China and continued to produce photographs while working in urban planning, design, and education. His photographic practice reveals a refined sensitivity to light, structure, space, and modern life. Moving between pictorialism and modernist experimentation, his works include landscapes, still lifes, portraits, urban scenes, industrial subjects, and color photography. As both a photographer and an urban planner, Jin brought together artistic observation and spatial thinking, leaving behind a rare visual record of twentieth-century China.
Few figures in modern China made such lasting contributions to both photography and urban planning. Jin Shisheng’s work occupies an important position in the history of modern Chinese photography, while his broader career reflects a singular ability to move between artistic creation, visual culture, and the shaping of the modern built environment.
Selected Exhibition
1961
Liu Xucang and Jin Shisheng’s Art Photography Exhibition, Shanghai, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Beijing, China.
1988
Jin Shisheng’s Art Photography, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China.
Selected Publications
1932
Published photographs in Lin Loon magazine and four Qingdao landscapes in The Chinese Kodakery.
1936–1937
Co-founded and edited Flying Eagle, one of the most influential photography magazines of the Republican period.
1957
Published essays and photographic works in the first, second, and third issues of Chinese Photography.
1961
A Selection of Jin Shisheng’s Photography, Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House.
1978 onward
Published photographs and articles in Chinese Photography, Chinese Photographers, and Light and Shadow.
1999
Jin Shisheng Photos 1930–1998, Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House.
2016
Relics—Jin Shisheng and Modern Chinese Photography, Tongji University Press.