Yan Wang Preston

Yan Wang Preston (* 1976, Henan Province in China in 1976) is a visual artist interested in landscape representation, identity, migration, and the environment. With photography as her primary medium, her solo, collaborative, and participatory projects employ still and moving images, sound, performance, installation, and the artist book to explore complex ideas from multiple angles.

Wang Preston’s practice is characterised by rigorous research processes led by her committed embodiment within the land to gain first-hand, skin-to-skin-like understanding. Her projects are demanding physically, intellectually, and emotionally. For her first major project, Mother River (2010–2014), she photographed the entire 6,211 km Yangtze River in China at precise 100 km intervals on a large-format plate camera. Such a monumental undertaking enabled her to provide a multilayered, vernacular view of contemporary China while subverting the existing hierarchies within the photographic representation of the Yangtze River since 1842. During that project she created 'The red pictures' by accident and they became an important part of her Yangtze River project.

Wang Preston’s projects are internationally and critically acclaimed. She was the recipient of the inaugural RPS Award for Environmental Responsibility in 2023. She won 1st Prize in Professional Landscape, Sony World Photography Awards (2019); 1st Prize in Professional Commission, Syngenta Photography Prize (2017); and the Shiseido Photographer Prize at the Three Shadows Photography Annual Award in Beijing, China (2016). She was one of the Hundred Heroines awarded by the Royal Photographic Society in 2018.

Her work is in numerous collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, USA; National Trust Collections, UK; Wuhan Art Museum, China; Syngenta AG, Swatch Art Peace Hotel, Shanghai and since 2020 as part of the IKS Collection, Düsseldorf.

Wang Preston gained her BSc in Clinical Medicine at Fudan University, Shanghai, in 1999 and subsequently qualified as a practising anaesthetist. She emigrated to the UK in 2005 and changed her career to photography. In 2009 she gained an MA in Visual Arts from Leeds Beckett University. In 2018 she was awarded a PhD in Photography by the University of Plymouth. Alongside her artistic career, she lectures at the University of Huddersfield. She lives in West Yorkshire, UK, with her husband and daughter.

In 2024/25 she was presented as part of the exhibition "PHOTO - ART - PHOTO. From Julia Margaret Cameron to Thomas Ruff" at Clemens Sels Museum Neuss with 'The red pictures', which are part of the IKS Collection. The show has been curated by Anita Hachmann and Ralph Goertz.