On the other side of the world, Elmira photographer Tina Weltz was famous for a week while representing Canada at one of the largest photo exhibitions on the international stage.
The Pingyao International Photography Festival (PIP) is held every year in the Shanxi province of China and this year was the first time Canada was represented in the exhibition of more than 20,000 photos by professional photo-takers from all over the globe. The photos were displayed in and around 10 different warehouse buildings in the walled city, which was named a UNESCO Heritage Site in 1997.
Weltz is the president of the Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC) and although she didn’t have any of her own photos in the exhibition, she hand-selected the shots to be displayed at the festival on behalf of our home and native land.
“They had a theme – Dream and Home – for this year’s festival,” she said from her Elmira studio, having just returned. “What I looked for was in our (PPOC competition category) fine art/landscape. We wanted to showcase Canada as photographers, but also our landscape and what our home is. It was the first time Canada has ever shown there, so that was really exciting.”
Even though Weltz was a world away from her home in Woolwich Township, she felt a sense of familiarity while exploring the walled city of Pingyao.
“It is its own little city within a city,” she said. “When you are in the walled city, it felt like a little community, so that was kind of nice. It did kind of make you feel at home and … didn’t make you feel like you had 27 million people around you.”
Even with that sense of home, Weltz says the culture in the Asian country was a bit of a shock for her.
“I had no idea what to expect. It was really exciting,” she said. “You are kind of going in unknown. There, they are in your face and in your space. It is not that they are being rude, that is their norm.”
While in China, Weltz experienced the life of a celebrity. As a tall and blonde woman, she says she “stuck out like a sore thumb.”
“I have never had my photo taken so much in my life,” she said with a laugh. “Being stalked down the middle of the street while I was doing my own thing and minding my own business, then all of a sudden, you are like a superstar because you have like eight people taking your picture. I was feeling like a famous person for 10 days. I guess it is good luck to have your photo with someone who is blonde, so that totally explains it, but it was really funny. They would recognize me from TV. When I left Pingyao and went to Beijing for a few days on my own, I thought it would kind of stop, but it didn’t.”
Weltz, as one of the main representatives at the PIP, did interviews on television, in newspapers and her welcome speech from the PIP opening ceremonies was broadcast to millions of televisions across China.
“When they had the opening ceremonies, it is like the Oscars for them. It is insane and huge,” she said. “It was a terrifying highlight [of my trip]. I was asked to bring greetings on behalf of Canada, and I also brought greetings from all the international photographers. Then, they televised it to the whole nation. It was intense. It showcased Canada in a really good light.”
Weltz is back in Elmira now, working at her photography business, Calla Studios on Howard Avenue, but is already considering a trip back to China. She wouldn’t frequent the country’s larger cities next time, however.
“I would go back to that little community and other smaller areas of China in a heartbeat. Hanging out in Beijing? Maybe not,” she said, adding that during her trip, she managed to cross a couple of items off her bucket list. “One of them was to climb the Great Wall (of China). Obviously, if you are going to China, you have to do that. It was an incredible experience. We didn’t go with a regular tour group. It was just the two of us and we took a private guide. It was pretty awesome.”
