Born in 1954 in the city of Anshun in Guizhou, China. Yang Yankang joined the distribution department of Inphoto magazine in Shenzhen in 1984. However, it was not until 1985 that he began his adventures in photography. Since then, his work has been exhibited in Asia and Germany , and has often been acknowledged for its questioning of religion. In 2001 he won first prize at the Yiping de Shandong International Festival and joined Agence VU the same year. In 2009 he photographed a story about Buddhism in Tibet.