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Wan’s ultimate choice of the panoramic format may well have been the best decision for countering these inherent disadvantages. By using a wide frame, he opened up not only his own field of vision but also that of future viewers. Technically, he sliced the river into segments, but the resulting horizontally unfolding images stretch out like a handscroll, unrolling through time and space, giving us something akin to the experience of walking along the riverbank ourselves. ……Wan Chaofan’s Huangpu River series is not a simple visual introduction or annotation of the river. Rather, it is a process of visual inquiry that intertwines the act and the experience of looking. ……Photography, at its root, is the act and process of negotiating one’s relationship with what one photographs. From this perspective, Wan’s Huangpu River project opens up new pathways and ideas for thinking about how photography can create dialogue and coexistence with nature and society—including rivers.
Gu Zheng(Professor, Fudan University / Photography and Visual Culture Studies)

Wan Chaofan’s latest photobook Yes, the River Knows — Huangpu River is the second installment of his long-term project Yes, the River Knows, following Yes, the River Knows — Arakawa.
The previous work, focusing on the Arakawa River in northern Tokyo, received the 44th New Cosmos of Photography Excellence Award, the 24th Miki Jun Award, and the 23rd Sagamihara Emerging Photographer Award.
In this new series, Wan turns his lens toward the Huangpu River flowing through Shanghai, China.
For him, the Huangpu is the river of his homeland, yet not of his hometown — a sense of distance that allows him to examine the relationship between city, river, and nature with a composed and reflective gaze.
Continuing his exploration of river imagery, the work creates a dialogue between the Arakawa and Huangpu Rivers, revealing contrasts in landscape shaped by differing social and ecological contexts.
The series was photographed using a medium-format FUJI GX617 camera.
The panoramic format expands the viewer’s field of vision, capturing the vastness and complexity of the Huangpu, while the photographer responds to the river’s quiet terrain and natural light with a subtle visual rhythm.
Through walking and photographing along the riverbanks, Wan Chaofan searches for metaphors of the modern city within the river’s flow.
His work functions both as a geographical investigation and as an exploration of visual and social space.
Yes, the River Knows — Huangpu River continues his ongoing reflection on the intertwined relationships between rivers, cities, and human existence