The China Project

75 Three Decades: The Contemporary Chinese Collection LI Zhensheng From the mid 1960s, for almost 20 years, Li Zhensheng worked as a photographer for the Heilongjiang Daily newspaper in the city of Harbin, north-eastern China. 1 During this period, he documented the daily events of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76) for the newspaper, subsequently hiding his negatives under the floorboards of his home. His photographs form a fascinating and rare chronicle of the time. 2 Li’s portfolio begins in 1964: the peace of the sunrise captured in Early dawn in Heilongjiang Province countryside, 21 December 1964 1964 is significantly contrasted by ensuing images of 1966 and the 1970s. In Harbin, the effects of the Cultural Revolution were heavily felt, with the destruction of Buddhist temples and attacks on leading party officials. Top party denunciation, Harbin, 29 August 1966 1966 shows the humiliation and punishment of a provincial party leader accused of being a ‘black gang element’, 3 while the photograph of the Heilongjiang Song and Dance Company performing the model opera Militia Women in April 1966 reveals the other, more acceptable face of the Cultural Revolution. Li’s 1967 self-portrait shows him in his office holding his Rolleiflex camera, poised in the staged act of taking a photograph. (The photograph was taken with another medium-format camera set on a self-timer.) This self-portrait serves as a poignant reminder of the human creator of these images and viewer of these events. In 1968, Mao Zedong brought in the army to disband the various Harbin Red Guard groups who had been responsible for violence and anarchy. An image from 1968 shows a public execution: seven men and one woman were paraded through the streets and then shot as they kneeled in a row before onlookers at a cemetery. Six were criminals, but two were condemned on trumped-up charges as ‘counter-revolutionaries’, their public deaths the government’s attempt to reinforce centralised order. The remaining photographs from 1968 show writers and artists marching on their way to the countryside to undertake manual labour; peasants reading from Mao’s published ‘letter to peasants’, which appeared in the Heilongjiang Daily ; and swimmers reciting from Mao’s writings near Songhua River on the second anniversary of his famous swim in the Yangtze. These images of the growing Mao cult focus on the ‘positive’ aspects of the Cultural Revolution, reflecting Mao’s commands to the media. The final image of the portfolio is a diptych, showing a massive rally of the People’s Liberation Army in Harbin’s People’s Stadium, denouncing Deng Xiaoping. In April 1976, Mao had removed Deng from all public positions, and the banners in Li’s photographs announced Deng’s numerous crimes. It is fitting that this image concludes the portfolio — 1976 was the year of Mao’s death, the prosecution of the infamous Gang of Four, and the end of the Cultural Revolution. By choosing this image, the portfolio hints at the future — not only the ongoing psychological effects of the era, but also Deng Xiaoping’s role in China’s economic liberalisation and the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square. endnotes 1 In the late 1940s, Harbin had become the centre of the communist base area, from which China was successfully unified under communist control in 1949. 2 ‘Red-colour news soldier’, the title given to this portfolio of photographs, is the literal translation of the characters printed on the armband given to Li and his rebel group in Beijing in 1966. (Information derived from Li Zhensheng’s Red-Color News Soldier: A Chinese Photographer’s Odyssey Through the Cultural Revolution , Phaidon, New York, 2003.) 3 A term given by the Communist Party of China encompassing individuals and families from the former ruling class as well as the intelligentsia. People denounced as ‘black gang elements’ often had their houses and possessions confiscated or destroyed. See Kam-yee Law and Peter Brooker, The Chinese Cultural Revolution Reconsidered: Beyond Purge and Holocaust , Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2003, unpaginated. opposite Reciting Chairman Mao’s instructions, Harbin, Songhua River, 16 July 1968 1968 Digital print / 30 x 30cm Writers and artists march through Wuchang County in Heilongjiang Province, 18 August 1968 1968 Digital print / 30 x 30cm Top party denunciation, Harbin, 29 August 1966 1966 Digital print / 30 x 45cm All works from ‘Red-colour news soldier’ (portfolio of 9 photographs) 1964–76, printed 2008 / The Kenneth and Yasuko Myer Collection of Contemporary Asian Art. Purchased 2008 with funds from Michael Simcha Baevski through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation