An artists' impression of the planned Lishui photography cultural center. The roof is designed to be a stunning garden. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

With the 2022 FIAP World Photographers Conference to be held on Nov 17-21, the city of Lishui in East China's Zhejiang province is ramping up into overdrive to get things ready for the event.

Differing from previous photography festivals held in Lishui, the World Photographers Conference will highlight the "specialization, industrialization and internationalization" of photography.

The conference will focus on creating a professional platform consisting of frontier technology, internationally renowned artists' works, qualified elements of photography and a sharing mechanism for Chinese and foreign youth to express and exchange their ideas.

It will bring together international and domestic photography companies, the digital images industry and the images services industry.

Fifty-one well-known brands and institutions from at home and abroad – including Huawei, Baidu, Philips, Adobe and VCG – have signed up to participate in the video products expo.

"Not only photography equipment, video services and other related upstream and downstream industries, but games manufacturers have also taken the initiative to seek cooperation with the organizing committee of the conference," said Fu Weixin, curator of the Photography Museum of Lishui.

Lishui's goal of building a competitive photography industry cluster is not far away, Fu added.

A total of 21 art organizations submitted more than 500 works of art for the Lishui PHOTO Art Fair, a sideline activity of the conference, including works by Yousuf Karsh, Edward Weston and Araki Nobuyoshi. A series of famous photography masterpieces such as Winston Churchill by Yousuf Karsh and Pepper by Edward Weston will be on sale in Lishui.