XuYong

Xu Yong (born 1954, Shanghai) is a Chinese photographer and cultural entrepreneur. He graduated from Luoyang University of Technology in 1978 and, from 1984 to 1988, worked in the creative department of a Beijing advertising agency before mounting his first solo photography exhibition in 1986. From 1993 he organized cultural tours through Beijing's traditional hutong alleys and courtyards, a subject that became central to his photographic practice, and in 2003 he conceived and realized the art action Re-Creation 798, contributing to the founding of Beijing's 798 Art Zone as a center for contemporary art.

Xu Yong's photography ranges from his long-running documentation of Beijing's vanishing hutong neighborhoods to the series Negatives, in which he printed unretouched negative images from his own archive of Tiananmen Square in 1989, allowing the inverted tonal register to estrange and complicate the historical record. His book Hutong 101 Photos, first published in 1990, has appeared in multiple Chinese, Japanese, and — most recently, in 2024 — German editions from Kerber Verlag.

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions internationally, including This Face at BankART KAIKO, Tokyo (2021), Negatives at Galerie Julian Sander, Cologne (2016), and Portraits of Hutong at HUA Gallery, London (2013), and has been included in group exhibitions such as the Festival Images Vevey, the BredaPhoto International Photo Festival, the Darmstadt Photography Festival, and the Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale.

Xu Yong lives and works in Beijing.