Jun Sun graduated from Hangzhou’s Academy of Arts armed with a degree in visual communications. Although he chose camera and film over oils and canvas, he never really left his art classes behind and his unique style has made him one of China’s most sought-after fashion photographers.

We meet Jun Sun in his studio – an underground vault-like space that you enter as you might the depths of a pyramid. Sun is seated on an exotically-shaped purple chair. He’s tall, bespectacled, friendly, calm and comfortable. Close by, incongruously, there’s a rugged game of pool in progress, presumably his assistants decompressing. They appear to have recently completed a photo shoot, the remnants of which are left to one side.

Try to get Sun talking about photographic equipment and you’ll detect a slight wince behind his porthole spectacles. “I’m really just not that interested in the technology,” he says. “Certainly good equipment is important. Even a painter wants the best brushes”. Sun goes on to say that he personally prefers film to digital, but that digital images will eventually be equally good. Although still enamoured with film, Sun accepts “the convenience of the new technology” and works with both systems. “Even so,” he adds, “I think you still get more depth with film, more subtlety in the darker shades.”

Look at any images in Sun’s portfolio and you see the painter at work – whether in a fashion splash, a landscape, a plate of food or a portrait. Pointing to his temple, he says, “I have first to see the image, then I will work on it”. It can take him up to three weeks to get the composition right and for outside scenes a small team of assistants will scout the country to find a location that perfectly fits the picture he’s carrying in his head. He says for him it’s all about “the mood and atmosphere, to make a picture that excites like a work of art”. Is it an obsession? “Yes, of course, absolutely,” Sun admits.

“I do not take photographs at speed, shoot off dozens of frames. It’s not the way I work. Others do, and do it verywell. They can get some wonderful results,” he says. But working like a plein air artist, Sun is a patient, painstaking photographer. He’ll wait for hours at a location until the right moment arrives, when the light or the breeze delivers just what he’s after. Then he’ll react like lightning, and the results are often astonishing. The ‘Amazing Dream’ portfolio (pictured) demonstrates this ephemeral quality in Sun’s work, how he is capable of creating and capturing a seemingly transitory image.

When asked about his artistic inspiration, no individual names come to mind for Sun, although he mentions schools of art such as High Victorian and Impressionism as influences. “Of course, there are many photographers whose work I admire, but I do not feel influenced by any in particular,” he says. “But I can be excited by a painting and translate that through my photography.”

Sun’s fashion photography has led to commissions from Esquire, Men’s Uno, Bazaar and Elle magazines, and he’s also been published in a raft of other top-end international glossies. Last year he had two major exhibitions, he’s currently planning another and looking for sponsors. He’s also working on a book of his photography.

At the end of the day, though the acclaim and challenges of his work are nice, Sun’s ambitions are simple, “I just want to be happy,” he says.

Email: [email protected]

Next Page: Art News