Photo: 3rd cavalry squadron on manoeuvres in Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia province, 1943. By Xu Xiaobing.
Preparing himself for a long march, Aidan Jones strode forth to the Photographers' Gallery to see this fascinating exhibition.
Two exhibitions, on at The Photographers' Gallery until May 30, give an emotive and challenging reminder of China’s communist revolution, from the heroic inception of the People’s Republic in 1949 to the blood-soaked era of the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76.
The pictures, taken by Mao’s propaganda photographers, Hou Bo and her husband Xu Xiaobing, and Li Zhensheng- a young photojournalist at the time of the Cultural Revolution- explore the tensions of historical memory.
The efforts of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, the peasant-soldier, poet and revolutionary patriarch, to scuttle Imperial influence over China and create a communist government quickly assumed legendary status.
Yet the Cultural Revolution he inspired is in some quarters still shrouded by misinformation and thinly-veiled romanticism.
Scholars have called for an end to the convenient amnesia of the protagonists and argue for dialogue with a revolutionary past deluged in violence, recrimination and corruption. These exhibitions respond eloquently to that demand.
Photo: Proclamation of the People's Republic of China by Mao Zedong, at the Gate of Celestial Peace in Tian An Men, October 1, 1949. By Hou Bo.
Now in her 80th year, Hou Bo’s rise from penniless peasant to the personal photographer of the man she still refers to as The Great Leader makes for the perfect revolutionary story.
That after 12 years of taking pictures of Mao she too was jailed in a re-education camp, complements the tale of a contorted revolution.
Trained by her photographer husband Xu Xiaobing and benefiting from unparalleled access to the leadership of the People’s Republic, Bo’s photographs, taken between 1949-65, were used to sculpt the revolutionary iconography of later years.
Most depict Mao playing his favoured roles: at one with nature swimming in the Yangtze despite his advancing years, caught contemplating the immense landscape of his emergent nation, holding conference with his advisors or laughing amongst adoring peasants.
There are, however, other clearly less contrived images, that capture Mao’s close relationship with his family and reveal another side to this most steely and dogmatic of characters.
At other points Bo’s photographs are a reminder of the enormity of Chairman Mao’s achievements. Her favourite is of the founding of the People’s Republic. She recalls: "It was a very proud moment for all Chinese people. Before then China was a semi-feudal, colonised country where mountains were carried on the backs of all of the Chinese people".
Photo: "Our friends from around the world", 1959. By Hou Bo.
It is indeed difficult to fully grasp the strength of will and organisation Mao instilled in a vast nation of many millions of peasants to defeat first the Japanese and then the US-backed Kuomintang.
The second exhibition slaps any romanticism for the revolution aside, cataloguing the ritual humiliation and torture that characterised the revolution in the 60s and 70s.
Li Zhensheng, then a young, fervent believer in the necessity of a Cultural Revolution to root out corrupt bureaucrats and refocus the meandering Republic, took pictures celebrating the public trials and rallies of that period.
As a propagandist he omits the graphic detail of the inestimable thousands of executions and frenzied beatings of perceived revisionists.
Working on the Heilongjinng Daily his pictures capture the never-ending cycle of denunciations in which he himself would eventually be caught. Established party cadres are seen wearing ridiculously oversized dunce caps as they are jeered by erstwhile friends and colleagues.
Men with heads bowed under the groaning weight of public shame and the insulting placards they were forced to carry are ever-present in his photographs.
Photo: advance army post Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia province, 1943. By Xu Xiaobing.
Humiliation was completed by black ink, a symbol of the 'Black Ghost' or 'Black Bastard' of Chinese folklore, smeared onto the faces, mouths and clothes of the denounced.
What were the counter-revolutionary sins of these broken men? Zhensheng remembers for some it was enough to have a hairstyle similar to the Chairman, and in doing so suggesting to the warped reasoning of the Red Guards that they harboured political ambitions.
Others were persecuted for being property owners, employers, not reading Maoist texts, or simply representing the loathed 'old world' by age, family or profession.
Zhensheng’s pictures are taken as an energetic participant in this chaos and are the only known photographic record of the period.
Although he remembers his blind loyalty to the Cultural Revolution with sadness, Zhengsheng is determined to understand why and show how a nation can devour itself.
"I was sure Mao was right but looking back it was a time full of laughable and stupid actions," he said at a recent lecture in London. "It was a joke, but then we Chinese have played too many jokes on ourselves."
