Abstract
Considered the first large‐scale presentation of contemporary documentary photography by a Chinese institution, the traveling exhibition Humanism in China (Zhongguo renben) was documented through the publication of at least three separate photobooks, each addressing distinct domestic and international audiences in mainland China (2003), Germany (2006), and the United States (2009). These photobooks preserve curatorial choices made at the different stations of the exhibition regarding nature, number, and layout of photos in order to adapt to different audiences in China and abroad. Among these choices, the inclusion of historical, posed propaganda photos in the corpus of documentary photos, as well as the removal of eleven photos from the international editions of the photobook—allowing the transformation of the project from a critical appeal for reform into an element of official Chinese cultural diplomacy—makes different Chinese representational systems visible. Analytically, recognizing the signifiers of these systems opens new ways to investigate the photobooks, their distinct curatorial choices, and underlying conceptions of (inter)national representations of China.
Introduction
Four naked men spreading their butt cheeks for the observer, female workers being frisked after finishing their work at the factory, a death row inmate urinating into a toilet with the noose around his neck being held by a warden. These are some glimpses of life in China which you could—or could not—see, depending on where you saw the exhibition Humanism in China (Zhongguo renben). “The exhibition not only marks the first large‐scale presentation of contemporary documentary photography by a Chinese institution, but also the first time a museum in China has made such an effort to collect photography as a fine art to be preserved and researched,”1 proclaims the original domestic catalog. The exhibited 601 photos were so well received by Chinese audiences that, following its run in China (2003–4), they were sent abroad as a traveling exhibition (2006–9). At least three distinct photobooks have been published for the different exhibition sites of Humanism in China, and this article is a critical analysis and comparison of the domestic and international editions of these photobooks.
Some international readers of the photobooks have understood Humanism in China to be “a refutation of ‘documentary’ photography in the service of politics, a formulation that dominated just a few generations before,”2 referring to the propagandistic products of the Chinese state‐operated photo network during the time between the foundation of the People's Republic and the end of the Cultural Revolution after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The carefully arranged network of institutions allowed only photography conforming to the vision of the Chinese Communist Party (or even the dominant faction within it) to be published on a wider scale, severely limiting the possible visual representations of China to a form commonly grasped as “Socialist realism.”3 It is against this background that the exhibition's curators claim its participating photographers have recorded “reality, placidly, naturally, and honestly,” allowing viewers to “see a natural, unadorned, active, and humanistic China.”4 However, it needs to be kept in mind that in the Chinese context, the “Documentary realism” promoted from the 1980s on as a refutation of the dominant “Socialist realism” of the Mao years still politicized the question of how to represent the Chinese people in photography and served to legitimize contestants in the factional struggles within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).5 These different lineages of and expectations toward “documentary photography” converge in the global reception of Humanism in China: Jerome Silbergeld, curator of the New York station of the exhibition, selected “an arts‐oriented aesthetic” for it, “given the strong social basis already present throughout the entire group of photographs”;6 in contrast, the directors of the German museums hosting the exhibition revealed the horizon of their expectations toward “documentary photography” by comparing it to Edward Steichen's seminal traveling exhibition Family of Man (first shown at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1955).7 Therefore, Humanism in China offers the unique opportunity to recontextualize Chinese documentary photography in a wider representational system of which cultural diplomacy and global circulation and reception of images are key components.8
Moreover, along with the three different catalogs of Humanism in China, three distinct sets of photos were compiled and exhibited: the original set of 601 photos shown in Guangzhou, a set with at least eleven photos removed shown in Beijing as well as internationally, and, finally, a set of one hundred photos shown in New York. The existence of these different sets of photos (taken from one original corpus) for domestic and international audiences also raises the question of which actors were determining the photographic representation of China. In addition, we need to ask for what purpose, and which of these representations—if any of them—is the “natural and unadorned” one promised in the texts accompanying the international catalog. We want to explore possible reasons for the omission of the eleven images in particular, since they mark the point where the separate representational systems embodied in the different exhibition sets diverge most clearly. By situating the individual photos within overarching hyperimages and tracing one “historic image's” provenance,9 we aim to show that Humanism in China's promise of authenticity can only be fulfilled by situating the material in larger contexts. Since the differences in the selection of photos representing China invariably draw attention to the actors affecting these selections, the outlook of this essay is informed by a network approach.
The photobooks and the exhibition have not attracted much scholarly attention yet. Claire Roberts's Photography and China mentions the exhibition as one of the last examples in her chapter on reportage and new wave photography but does not mention that it traveled abroad nor that there were different publications.10 Martin Parr and WassinkLundgren's The Chinese Photobook describes the domestic catalog of the original exhibition in Guangzhou, mentioning that it traveled abroad, but conflating and equating the domestic and international catalog.11 While not a work of research, “Photographic First,” Sheila Melvin's contemporary review for the New York Times of the exhibition in Beijing, notes that “the National Art Museum cut seventeen photos from the exhibition,” which opens new routes of inquiry by problematizing the existence of different curatorial actors.12
Given the remarkable circumstances of the exhibition and its status as occupying numerous firsts in the history of Chinese (documentary) photography, the comparative lack of academic interest in the material is surprising. Besides aiming to clarify some imprecisions in the previous research, the authors hope to call further attention to this remarkable exhibition and the catalogs documenting it.
The Exhibitions and Their Publications
The exhibition—originally curated in Guangzhou by An Ge, Hu Wugong, and Wang Huangsheng—was shown at nine different institutions in four different countries on three different continents (table 1).13 While the number of photographs shown changed to some extent, the basic structure of the exhibition remained the same at all locations. It was divided into four thematic sections of roughly equal size: “Existence” (“Shengcun”), “Relationship” (“Guanxi”), “Desire” (“Yuqiu”) and “Time” (“Shijian”).
The exhibition's tour, which lasted approximately six years, can be divided into three major sections, each of which was accompanied by the publication of an exhibition catalog:14 an initial collection, Zhongguo renben: Jishi zai dangdai (Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography), published by the Guangdong Museum of Art in Guangzhou in 2003; a catalog with the same name published to coordinate with the German exhibitions in 2006; and a catalog, Humanism in China: A Contemporary Record of Photography, for the US exhibition, published in 2009.
In keeping with the exhibition, the New York publication includes a selection of only one hundred photographs. Since the images themselves play a subordinate role in the publication,15 we will restrict our analysis here to the first two photobooks. In both the “domestic” and the “international” catalogs, the photographs dominate the books, although they differ greatly in their internal and external structure.
The domestic catalog has a rather small, square format with an edge length of thirteen centimeters. White lettering on a black cover provides the title of the volume in both English and Chinese, using a typeset of simplified Chinese characters (jiantizi) (fig. 1). This bilingualism runs through the entire catalog. Inside, after a short preface, the first of four thematic sections is introduced by two facing pages completely colored in brown (left page) and black (right page) on which white letters name the section to follow.16 The bulk of the publication is made up of pages showing individual photos: one page each is used for a single black‐and‐white photograph, including a caption indicating the photographer, number, time, place, and content of the photo.17
Being situated on facing pages, the photographs are never perceived independently, but always as part of a display that can be described as a “hyperimage.” Hyperimages are temporary or permanent compilations of images that, through their immediate confrontation with one another, tend to evoke a comparative—rather than, for example, an auratic—mode of vision and can thus lead to shifts in the perception of meaning of the individual image.18 With regard to the domestic catalog, the juxtaposition of two photographs usually emphasizes a certain thematic aspect of the single image more strongly. This is particularly evident on the first pages with facing images (pp. 8–18), where photographs of crowds of people are followed by more photographs of crowds of people, thus formally reinforcing the content within the individual photographs—masses of people. The juxtaposition and the continuous repetition, which the viewers discover for themselves as they leaf through the pages, visually introduces the overarching claim of the project as the representation of the Chinese people. In other cases, by integration into hyperimages, certain aspects of thematically unconnected, individual photos are emphasized so that possible thematic openness or ambiguities are limited.
The juxtapositions without a direct thematic connection seem the most interesting, such as on the facing pages 30–31 (fig. 2). The photo on the left is captioned, “A scene of the building collapse,” [sic] and shows a destroyed building that no longer consists of anything but rubble, wooden sticks, and drainpipes that crisscross the whole picture. Some men on the left side try to remove the rubble with only shovels, but this help seems to come too late for a man on the right, whose upper body is shown motionless and limp while his lower body is buried under the rubble. The photo on the corresponding right shows a group of people closely packed in a queue, who according to the caption are waiting to sell their blood to make a living. Both photographs were taken by different photographers and are not related by time or location. Nor can thematic parallels be found between the collapsed building and the closely packed queue, especially when compared to similar photos—for example, one captioned, “The rescue after the earth quake” (fig. 3, right). Only visually do both photographs create the impression of an exchange of meaning between them: the disorder of the waiting crowd is juxtaposed with the disorderly structure of the collapsed house. This comparison implies an urgent sense of claustrophobic precariousness in the living circumstances which the waiting farmers are trapped in and which even the drastic caption of the photo itself fails to arouse.
The international catalog functions quite differently, although it contains hyperimages as well. Printed in a larger 24 × 28 cm format, the cover shows a detail of one of the photographs, which can be unfolded to its full size (fig. 4). Furthermore, the catalog was sold bundled together with a volume containing German translations in a slipcase, which shows clippings of photos, the title of the exhibition, and exhibition locations in Germany (fig. 5). The bilingual title and subtitle are printed in red, white, and black on the cover. This time, the traditional Chinese characters (fantizi) are employed instead of the simplified ones; the former are used in Hong Kong, Macao, on Taiwan, and in some Chinese overseas communities, indicating an anticipated readership outside of mainland China.19 The inside of the catalog contains considerably more text: two prefaces and a following section of essays provide information on the concerns and context of the exhibition. Only on page 74 does the photographic part begin, which is introduced similarly to its counterpart in the domestic catalog by monochrome facing pages—this time one red (left page) and one black (right page) with white characters. The layout of the 590 photos is much more varied in the international catalog: up to 7 photos can be found within a pair of facing pages, but sometimes only a single one fills both pages. Another main difference is the use of color. For example, the backgrounds are sometimes black instead of uniformly white, and a considerable number of the photos have also been printed in color.
A closer look at pages 258–59 provides a telling example (fig. 6). There are four photos, two on each page. All of them have the same dimensions; while the two upper ones are printed in color, the two lower ones are in black and white. They are also linked thematically, as they show different kinds of pollution and people reacting to them. Furthermore, stronger formal parallels emerge in the composition of the two‐page spread: The small‐scale structure of photographs number 344 (top left) and 576 (bottom left) seem to correspond with each other, while 344 and 011 (bottom right) create a pull toward the center fold. In addition, 344 is brought into contact with the opposite, number 160 (top right), via the figure looking around. The man in the lower left image, on the other hand, functions as an identification figure for the viewers of the entire two‐page spread, since he is the only one looking out of the picture and seemingly addressing the viewers directly. Already these facing pages show how the layout of the international catalog is employed to create meaningful resonance between photos, subordinating the single photo to the composition of the display. Because of the way in which the photos in the international catalog are arranged, the photos sometimes are not juxtaposed as individual images but appear as part of a cohesive ensemble (fig. 7, right). While the upper photo shows female faces as photos‐within‐a‐photo that are fixed with clothespins on a line, the lower one depicts several bras hanging on a clothesline. The motivic references of the photographs only emerge though their spatial relationship to one another. In contrast to the domestic catalog, given the higher number of photos per two‐page spread, the curation of individual pages can thus be an even stronger factor in determining the respective meaning of the images.20
Conceptions of Chinese Documentary Photography in Contexts
Along with the three different photobooks accompanying the exhibitions, three distinct curatorial positions can be identified. These are the original curators’ position at the Guangdong Museum of Art, the censored version exhibited in Beijing—determining the shape of the international edition—and the largely “receptive” position of the five German museums as well as the China Institute in America. While all of these still adhere to the mission statement put forth by the original curators, the circulation to different sites endows the respective photo selections of the different curatorial actors with new contexts of reception and therefore new possibilities to be read.21
This mission statement put forth by the curators of the original exhibition and domestic catalog, while sometimes differing in small details,22 can be found in all catalogs documenting the exhibition, as well as some peripheral materials.23 The purpose of the exhibition is declared to be transformative, with the aim to humanize and individualize China, not only recording but also restoring the “real living conditions of the Chinese people.”24 Going beyond the documentation of contemporary living conditions, the humanistic connotations of different historical stages—through photos taken since 1951—are expressed. The resulting exhibition is declared to be a “specimen of Chinese people,” serving as a model for a diversified perspective on Chinese social realities for the “contemporary documentary photography world.”25
Even though all editions of the catalog include this statement in their accompanying texts, the respective outlook of the different editions varies considerably. The domestic catalog can be read as an appeal to continue the ongoing economic reforms and social transformation initiated after the ascension of Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s. In some of curator Hu's writings explaining the exhibition, he situates it in a line of preceding “independent” photo exhibitions such as Zongli ai renmin, renmin ai zongli (The Premier Loves the People, the People Love the Premier) and the photobook Renmin de daonian (The People's Mourning) (both 1979), as well as the later Shinian yi shunjian (Flashback—A Decade of Changes) (1986) and Jianju licheng (An Arduous Passage) (1987).26 While these are commonly taken as the rebirth and coming of age of “independent” photography after the end of Maoism, they also documented and mobilized public opinion in favor of the economic reform policy. Perhaps, in 2003, the curators at the Guangdong Museum of Art also felt the need to make a point about the continued need for reform and opening.
The later exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing changed the original curatorial vision by removing a number of photos from the corpus “because they weren't healthy or because of human rights and dignity. But they were all displayed in Guangzhou—that's where the reform started.”27 Surprisingly, the removal of a very limited number of photos allowed Humanism in China to transform from a local appeal for reform to a national representation of China, both for the Beijing audience as well as, later, for an international one. An article by Feng Yuan, director of the National Art Museum of China, published in Guangming Daily, details the changes the exhibition underwent in Beijing: its photos allow the viewer “to feel the arduous journey and struggle of the Chinese people on the road of building a moderately prosperous, socialist life,”28 referring directly to the moderately prosperous society put forward by Deng Xiaoping as a goal of the economic reforms. Feng also vows that the “newly renovated China National Art Museum will strive to implement the spirit of the 16th party congress and the important thought of the ‘Three Represents,’”29 referencing the controversial policy change enshrined into the CCP constitution at the party congress on behalf of outgoing chairman Jiang Zemin in November 2002. This doctrine of the Three Represents (Sange daibiao) posited that the CCP would henceforth represent “the demand of advanced productive forces, the direction of advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people,” which in practice meant opening the scope of the party's representation to include people other than the proletariat, even going as far as to include entrepreneurs.30
Being exhibited at the National Art Museum of China, Humanism in China now served as a national visualization of the CCP's inclusive policy to represent not just the Chinese workers, farmers, and soldiers, but all people of China. The depictions of social ills and economic shortcomings still kept in the photo selection now serve to delegitimize old politics of class struggle, as well as to illustrate Maoism's (pre‐1978) failure to advance China socially and economically.
Apparently, the reception of the exhibition in Beijing was satisfactory, since, as described above, a year later it was sent abroad, where it was enthusiastically received. The second volume of the international catalog—containing German translations of the essays in Wang and Hu's Zhongguo renben, as well as a short introduction by the directors of the participating museums in Germany—calls the first volume of the international catalog the “original catalog from China.”31
The introduction by the directors further testifies to the perceived authenticity of the images received from China: “No propagandistic photos, no portraits of people made to assume certain poses or show certain expressions were included in this exhibition.”32 The directors acknowledge that in the preceding years, many exhibition projects had been organized in the context of cultural exchange between China and the West, but that in these exchanges Western conceptions and standards of art had been dominant. Humanism in China, on the other hand, was believed to represent an “‘authentic’ exhibition‐document” at the German institutions involved, for it was perceived to candidly reproduce the exhibitions in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing.33
Besides missing that the “original catalog” was actually the one from Guangzhou, the directors of the German museums were also mistaken in assuming that the exhibitions at the Chinese institutions had been the same, for as has been shown, the cultural administration in Beijing was able to override the curators’ original vision through the removal of photos. The influence of this cultural administration is not acknowledged, even though it is mentioned in the introduction a few times: the five museum directors had first seen the exhibition in Shanghai in 2004, where they had traveled following the suggestion of Ma Canrong, then ambassador of China to Germany. The directors also express their gratitude to Chen Ping, vice‐head of the West‐European department at the Ministry of Culture of the PRC, as well as to Dong Junxing, minister‐counselor of culture at the Chinese embassy in Germany.34 Even though high‐ranking members of the Chinese apparatus for cultural diplomacy are thus named, the specifics of their involvement are not discussed. Tellingly, Wang Huangsheng's introduction in the same volume is—only in the German translation—dated December 2003, implicitly disavowing active involvement with the form of the exhibition after this date, that is, all exhibitions that followed the one in Guangzhou.
While the catalog of the New York exhibition mentions itself “complement[ing] the catalogue published in 2003” and also states that its “one hundred photos [were] selected from the original 600” (emphasis added),35 the one hundred photos selected for the New York exhibition do not include any of the eleven missing ones. This seems to indicate that the photo selection by Silbergeld was made from the corpus of photos exhibited in Beijing and sent abroad later. Silbergeld himself acknowledges that besides having to wait for the traveling exhibition to return from Germany (where it was sent by the PRC's National Cultural Department), he was aware that “eleven works in the original exhibition were already removed from the exhibition and catalogue before it traveled to Europe.”36 But this seemed to pose no problem for the curator, who in any case “avoided selecting photographs that appeal simply on the basis of either political or social sensationalism.”37 Based on this outlook, the New York exhibition might have arrived at the same selection of photos even if Beijing had not curatorially intervened beforehand. Considering that the somewhat “sensational” photos in question formed part of the original curatorial vision, it is questionable if the New York catalog complements the original one rather than the modified curatorial vision of Beijing.
Omitted Photos
While it has already been noted that eleven photos of the domestic catalog can no longer be found in the international one, we have not looked into possible motives for this fact yet. Do these photos allow possible conclusions about the differences between the two representational systems? Since a couple of structural reasons can be excluded,38 one could assume that the content of the photos themselves as well as their situation within certain hyperimages ought to be responsible for the decision to remove them. Given the restrictions on the length of this article, we will only discuss some of the omitted photos.39 A complete overview of all omitted photos is provided in table 2.
A look at the images themselves (figs. 8–17) as well as their English captions (table 2) shows that they may not have been considered appropriate representations of the country, as they trivialize prostitution, expose male nudity in an offensive way, or depict brutal consequences of the One Child policy. But who determines China's external image? What principles does it follow? To what extent do they collide with the curators’ aspirations described above? One possible source for these positions are administrative provisions concerning cultural exports that “shall be encouraged” or “prohibited,” first published in 1997 and confirmed again in 2014 by the Chinese Ministry of Culture.40 As defined here, cultural exports shown abroad should demonstrate unity and progress, while showcasing individual interests, and anything generally harming the image of China is prohibited.
At least two of the excluded photos, Huang Caixiang's depiction of young men taking a physical examination to join the army (fig. 8, right) and Bao Lihui's scene of a frisking at the drug abnegation center (fig. 17, right), show quite similar themes of the naked male body exposed and have a comparable visual language that clearly violates decorum and harms the image of China. These two images definitely exhibit what Silbergeld calls “sensationalism.” Nevertheless, the motif alone cannot remain the sole reason for their exclusion here, as naked male bodies—even with a focus on a behind stretching out toward the viewer—are also presented elsewhere in the international catalog (fig. 18, bottom left).
One possible explanation for these two images’ removal is their situation or contextualization within hyperimages. This becomes particularly clear with Huang Caixiang's photo (fig. 8, right), which is shown together with a photograph of a young woman looking at passing soldiers on the opposite page, suggesting a sexual dimension to the examining gaze present in both photos. The two representations are directly linked by different modes of examination, which may have contributed to the deletion of one. Thus, a direct confrontation of two images on a double page creates an unwanted representation of Chinese society, which could have led to the exclusion of a single photograph.
A buildup of context over several two‐page spreads can also be problematic for the single image, as the following example shows. Among the omitted photos are Wang Zheng's depiction of the moment before a reproductive sterilization (fig. 10, right) and Chen Rong's picture of an abandoned baby girl (fig. 11, right). They belong to a thematic section extending over several pages, dealing with parenthood and the One Child policy in particular, which was allowed to remain in the international catalog.41 What is problematic about them here is not the depicted scenes themselves but the way they show a particular aspect of the overarching theme. Compared to the photos on the surrounding pages, the two that have been removed clearly stand out: If in the remaining photos moments of closeness, caring, and togetherness are emphasized in the interaction of the depicted people, the relationship of the people in the omitted photos is cold and isolated. Unlike before, the hyperimage here is not formed by formal or structural similarities that are revealed to the comparative gaze, but by similarities in content that are successively revealed to viewers as they turn the pages. This pictorial rhetoric could even be stretched to the point of a narrative logic and, similar to a caesura in a motion picture, lead to the exclusion of the most drastic sequences, in this case Wang Zheng's photo (fig. 10, right). In the Chinese catalog, this is immediately preceded by a photograph of a wall‐slogan calling for the implementation of the One Child policy (fig. 10, left) and immediately followed by a depiction of a man carrying his wife home after sterilization.42 In the international catalog, the photographs of the slogan and of the man carrying his wife are presented together on facing pages (fig. 19)—a hyperimage with a narrative gap has now been created between them. Here, the different treatment of the intended readership becomes apparent in other respects as well: the photograph with the slogan, which addresses the surgical procedure at least as drastically as the photograph of the woman post‐sterilization, was possibly left in the catalog because it remains unreadable to an international audience who can't read Chinese.
We argue that by means of contextualizing the photos as components of specific hyperimages it becomes possible to explain the removal of thematically and visually relatively tame photographs, such as Zeng Yicheng's depiction of “the little actors of a troupe” (fig. 14, left). This photo shows young members of a traditional opera troupe in the middle of a training session. The left side of the photo is dominated by a single boy, who is depicted in a moment of extreme contortion: palms and feet are placed flat on the ground while his naked chest is turned upwards, his back extremely arched. His face, confronting the viewer directly, bears witness to the pain the position brings. The removal of this specific photo seems astonishing in view of a multitude of other pictures showing children in oppressive situations that were allowed to remain in the catalog: children being scolded by their parents, with physical punishment implied (fig. 20, upper right); on their life‐threatening way to school (fig. 21, right); or doing hard, physical work (fig. 22, left). Again, it is the immediate context of Zeng's photo that might have led to its removal. Other photographs belonging to the same hyperimage on surrounding pages in the domestic catalog show children in an educational context: reading, practicing musical instruments, traveling to school, or being picked up by their parents after school.43 A boy who reveals hardship and suffering as part of this national progress through education could no longer be part of this visual narrative, even though similar forms of hardship seem to be fine in other places within the catalogs. Although the proposed interpretive approach does not work in each individual case of the omitted photos, by grasping individual images as components of hyperimages, convincing horizons of meaning can be opened up for at least some of them.44 To varying degrees, formal or thematic parallels between the photographs prove relevant here, no matter if revealed in direct juxtaposition with one another or through successive turning of the pages.
A Documentary Photo from the 1970s?
Besides the removal of eleven photos from the international catalog, a different form of interplay between different representational systems becomes visible in the image selection of both photobooks: the inclusion of sixty‐five photos from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s in the section “Time,” which are presented in the exhibition's general context of documentary photography, while obviously having been made by photographers working for the state operated photo network. Due to this, as well as their formal qualities, these photos would conventionally be classified as propaganda photography.45
One example of this is photo 503, taken by Wu Zhenchao on the island of Hainan in 1974. According to the Chinese caption, the photo shows “armed fisherwomen working at sea,”46 which has been shortened, if not distorted, to “fisherwomen at work” in the English caption (fig. 23, bottom right). If the contemporary Chinese visitor of the exhibition felt reminded of something, this was no coincidence. This photo—or rather a very similar one from the same session taken only seconds later—was originally published in 1972 as part of the double‐page article “Xi dao nüminbing” (“Militiawomen of the Western Island”) in the Jiefangjun huabao (People's Liberation Army Pictorial) with the caption “They can cast nets and fish, as well as serve on sea patrol duties” (fig. 24, bottom right).47 Remarkably, the photo was originally published in color, but it was only reproduced in black and white in the photobook. Its original publication in 1972 also calls into doubt the obviously incorrect year given in the exhibition catalogs.
The militiawomen of the southern coastline were a common, if not ubiquitous, visual topos of the Cultural Revolution era,48 illustrating as well as actively promoting the militarization of society. Besides featuring in the big illustrated magazines of the time, they were also featured in a plethora of other media, such as Li Ruqing's 1966 novel Haidao nüminbing (Island Militiawomen) and the 1975 movie Hai Xia (dir. Qian Jiang, Chen Huai'ai, and Wang Haowei). In the medium of photography, the militias were heavily featured in the 1974 exhibition Nanhai zhudao zhi yi—Xisha qundao sheying zhanlan (One of the Various Islands of the South China Sea—Photo Exhibition on the Xisha Archipelago), published in the wake of the occupation of the Paracel Islands by People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces in 1974, following a clash with South Vietnamese troops.49 The exhibition heavily promoted the image of the heroic militias, and one of the project's leading photographers was Wu Zhenchao. He was no mere rank‐and‐file photographer of the state/military administrated media; in 1974, following his gaining national prominence with the publication of the photos from the Xisha archipelago, Xinhua News Agency promoted him as a model photographer to the press corps, as was announced in the notice “Learning from Comrade Wu Zhenchao,” published in the (internal) newsletter of the PLA Illustrated on November 22, 1974.50
While the fisherwomen in the photo might have made the average visitor of the exhibition only vaguely recall the circumstances of the early 1970s, the curators—seasoned photographers and picture editors—must have been acutely aware of Wu Zhenchao's background and the propagandistic production context of his photos and others like them, nevertheless including them in the section “Time.” This contradiction is acknowledged and explained by curator Hu in his essay in the international catalog.51 Disregarding their production in a propagandistic context, Hu argues that the historical images still can serve as historical evidence, or in his own words, “Fake photos are still a kind of evidence of the reality of social life, this fact may be called when the real is fake, the fake is also real.”52 Perhaps this is why it is not considered a falsehood for Wu Zhenchao's photo, originally published in color in 1972 with the caption “They can cast nets and fish, as well as serve on sea patrol duties,” to be published in black and white, attributed to the year 1974, and captioned as “fisherwomen at work.”
In the domestic Chinese context, knowledgeable readers would still have been able to read the sign of the militias‐turned‐fisherwomen and get the intention of the curators: providing a counterpart to the “contemporary” photography presented in HiC. However, as the voices of the German curators—claiming no propaganda photographs were included in the exhibition—above show, these finer points might have not survived the transfer to an international context, having been lost in translation.
Conclusion
Just like the propaganda photos by Wu Zhenchao and his colleagues have been repurposed as historical evidence in the catalogs, integrating them into a documentarian representational system, the documentary photos making up the original corpus of HiC have in turn been repurposed to serve as vehicles of official cultural diplomacy in order to represent China to audiences in Germany and the United States. Curiously, only eleven photos of 601 had to be removed to transform the exhibition from a critical appeal for reform into a cultural product deemed suitable for external representation by the PRC's National Cultural Department. The removal of such a small number of photographs seems all the more surprising considering the relative insignificance of the individual image in the layout of the international catalog. This article argues that by situating the omitted photos in their immediate visual surrounding in the catalogs—in hyperimages—possible visual causes for their exclusion can be deduced. Nevertheless, for other photos, further inquests remain to be undertaken.
The curatorial and censorial choices preserved and made visible in the different editions of the photobook, signifying belonging or subordination to different representational systems, are thus creating a much richer and more authentic image of Chinese national self‐representation than the original catalog ever could by itself, for they document the ongoing political struggles to implement one “true”—or universally valid—photographic representation of China. The promise of authenticity, however—implied by the original curators of the catalog and enthusiastically embraced by its German and American recipients—is only fully realized in the eye of the beholder. Already strongly contested in China itself, documentary photography's promise of realism is further complicated in a transcultural receptive context and will require new approaches.
Notes
Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 4.
For a detailed analysis of the Chinese photo network (sheying wang) in the period from 1949 to 1980, see Spyra, “Photo Network.”
Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 1:9.
For a more in‐depth analysis of the politics of photographic representation in the PRC after the Cultural Revolution, see Poborsa, “Staging the Future.”
Silbergeld, Humanism in China, 10. “Reclaiming Documentary Photography,” an accompanying essay by Richard K. Kent in the same volume, gives an overview of Chinese documentary photography of the Republican era (1912–49), historizing HiC beyond its antagonistic relationship with Chinese photography of the Mao years.
Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 2:9.
The fact that the exhibition traveled to other countries (i.e., Germany and the United States, as part of a wider drive to employ museum exhibitions abroad for Chinese cultural diplomacy in the early 2000s and 2010s, allows us to analyze HiC in the context of Chinese cultural and public diplomacy (i.e., foreign propaganda). Recent scholarship on Chinese cultural diplomacy includes Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive; d'Hooghe, China's Public Diplomacy; and Kong, Museums, International Exhibitions, and China's Cultural Diplomacy.
The authors mention “a book of critical essays that accompanies the catalogue,” which only holds true for the international edition. Parr and WassinkLundgren, Chinese Photobook, 314. These and several other differences between the photobooks will be examined below.
Melvin, “Photographic First.” Melvin gives the number of removed photographs as seventeen, while Daily China, “Collective Strength of the Ordinary,” gives the number of photos removed as nine.
An (*1947, Dalian) is a photographer and curator whose works have been shown in the exhibition Ziran. Shehui. Ren (Beijing, 1979). He works as an adviser for Fotoe (Guangzhou Integrated Image Company Ltd.) and in 2003 served as curator and jury member for the Pingyao International Photography Exhibition. Hu (*1949, Xi'an) is a photographer, professor, and PhD supervisor of Architecture School of Xi'an University of Architecture and Technology, as well as president of Shaanxi Photographers Association. Wang (*1956, Jieyang) is an artist and was curator and director of Guangdong Museum of Art (2000–2009).
The exhibition in Edinburgh is excluded in the following analysis. The photographic corpus was exhibited under a different title, and there seems to have been no new catalog.
Only a handful of them are reproduced in small format, accompanying a list of the one hundred photographs exhibited, found at the end of the booklet.
The sections are divided as follows: “Existence” (pp. 6–157), “Relationship” (pp. 158–309), “Desire” (pp. 310–465), and “Time” (pp. 466–615).
The numbering is likely taken from Fotoe picture agency (Guangzhou Integrated Image Company Ltd.), a private sector picture stock agency, which provided the photos used in the exhibition. Photos taken by the same photographer often have consecutive numbers, although they may be printed in different places in the catalog. There definitely was an external ordering system for the numbering, as the numbers do not provide any structure within the catalog. Overall, the 601 photographs are numbered from 001 to 585, of which twenty‐five photos belong to thematically connected series of photos (for example, 474–1 to 474–3, taken by Liu Weiqiang). The domestic and the international catalog both follow the same numbering scheme; numbers of the omitted photos are simply not used in the international catalog.
See Thürlemann, Mehr als ein Bild, 7; Dunker, Bilder‐Plural, 7–26. Felix Thürlemann, who first conceptualized hyperimages in 2004, focuses particularly on pictorial phenomena in premodern Europe, such as image fields on triumphal arches or foldable altarpieces. The concept was also extended to scientific and didactic usage of images—for example, Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas or André Malraux's Musée Imaginaire—as well as to exhibition displays. See also Bartelsheim, “Hyperimages.” Exhibition catalogs or photobooks have so far occupied only a marginal position in this discourse.
The international catalog's imprint, however, mentions being “only for sale in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland” and being distributed there by “Edition Braus im Wachter Verlag,” which also added a second volume of German translations of the essays contained in the catalog.
Several central questions in regard to these hyperimages remain: To what extent are the hyperimages intentional compilations, and to what extent are they created in the process of reception by the viewers themselves? Do the viewers connect the images as a whole, or do they connect only parts of the images? Furthermore, how are the hyperimages situated within the pages of the photobook, and what role does the viewer's physical interaction with the book—in this case, turning the page—play?
No information on the existence of a catalog for the Edinburgh exhibition of Humanism in China is available. While the curators there did display a considerable measure of agency by changing the English title of the exhibition to China: A Photographic Portrait while keeping the Chinese title, Zhongguo renben (Humanism in China), the corpus of photos exhibited was the set sent abroad from China.
“The theme of the exhibition is “humanizing China, individualizing China.” The title Humanism in China and the orientation of the exhibition reflect three levels of meaning: First, with the use of the typical authenticity of photography, the exhibition records, condenses, and restores the real living conditions of the Chinese people, expresses the humanistic connotations of different historical stages with a wide range of authentic details, and shows the actions and values of people in social life. Second, with a rich, free, and diverse individualized perspective, the exhibition expresses a complex survey of the individual existence of the Chinese people, and provides a rich “specimen of Chinese people” in the sense of the study of social images. Third, the exhibition aims to emphasize, advocate for, and express the contemporary humanistic circles of China, especially the humanistic orientation and spirit of human caring in the contemporary documentary photography world.” Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 3. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
It is found in Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 3; Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 1:5; Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 2:11; Silbergeld, Humanism in China, vi. Furthermore, it can be found in writings documenting and promoting the exhibition, such as Wu, “Yingxiang Zhongguo huanyuan shenghuo,” 4; and Yang, “Renben·Jishi·Sheying,” 48.
Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 3. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 3. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 1:10. See also Hu, Bao, and Yan, “Zhongguo Renben,” 24.
Feng, “‘Zhongguo Renben’ Jianzheng Lishi,” A4. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Feng, “‘Zhongguo Renben’ Jianzheng Lishi,” A4. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 2:5. Translated from German by authors of this article.
Baumstark et al., “Zur deutschen Präsentation,” 9. Translated from German by authors of this article.
Baumstark et al., “Zur deutschen Präsentation,” 9. Translated from German by authors of this article.
Silbergeld, Humanism in China, 17n50.
The omitted photos are representative of the rest of the photobook: taken by eleven different photographers, covering the period between 1985 to 2001—like the majority of photos—they show seven different regions of China. No anomalies or patterns can be identified here. Another possibility for the exclusion could have been the photos’ creators themselves: Were they no longer considered suitable representatives of the project? A closer examination shows that only two of the eleven photographers were completely “purged” (some of their other photos remained in the catalog), so this cannot be the main reason for most of the omissions.
We refer solely to the printed photobooks and not to the specific exhibition contexts, which we have not been able to reconstruct yet.
Ministry of Culture of the PRC, “Administrative Provision.” This source gives detailed instructions on the export of cultural items:
Article 16 The following items of culture‐and‐art performances and exhibitions shall be encouraged to export:
- (1)
Those carrying forward the outstanding traditional culture of the Chinese Nation;
- (2)
Those publicizing achievements of Chinese modernization;
- (3)
Those embodying today's Chinese culture‐and‐art levels;
- (4)
Those maintaining national integrity and ethical unity;
- (5)
Those benefiting the friendship between Chinese people and other peoples around the world.
Article 17 The following items of culture‐and‐art performances and exhibitions shall be prohibited from exporting:
- (1)
Those harming national interests and image;
- (2)
Those violating national diplomatic guidelines and policies;
- (3)
Those going against Chinese ethical unity and national unification;
- (4)
Those preaching feudal superstition and silly folk customs;
- (5)
Those impairing nationhood or selfhood on performance or appear coarse and inferior on art;
- (6)
Those going against the religious beliefs and fold customs of the guest country;
- (7)
Those maybe impairing the relationship between China and other countries;
- (8)
Other contents prohibited by laws and administrative regulations.
For this section in the original catalog, see Guangdong Museum of Art, Zhongguo renben, 92–100; for this section in the international catalog, see Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 132–39.
Translated to English, the slogan on the wall says: “After the first fetus an IUD [intrauterine device] will be installed, after the second fetus the oviducts will be ligated, exceeding the [allowed number] of pregnancies, both [character obstructed by head of child] and ligation of the oviducts, exceeding the [allowed number] of births, both ligation of the oviducts as well as a punishment” (authors’ translation).
A reconsideration of Wang Chongyan's depiction of a criminal shown urinating (fig. 15, right) against the background of his positioning is insightful. The photo forms the end of a series of urinating persons extending over several pages and the prelude to three photographs that show more or less publicly exposed prisoners. Thus, a kind of “showcasing function” could be ascribed to it here. By deleting it, a (falsifying) intervention in the image rhetoric of the project as a whole is thus made here quite concretely.
For a description of the workings of the photo network—the state operated system of illustrated media—see Spyra, “Photo Network.”
Wang and Hu, Zhongguo renben, 1: 403. The captions and date are the same in the domestic and international catalogs. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Wu and Chi, “Xi dao nüminbing,” 15. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
The Paracel Islands are called the Xisha Islands in China.
Wu (1930–2019), a member of the Communist Party, had joined the armed forces in 1951, where he would work as a military photographer. He became a correspondent for Xinhua News Agency's Hainan Military Subdistrict in 1977. From 1983 on, he worked for the Hunan branch of the Chinese Photographer's Association. See Yu, Zhongguo sheyingjia dacidian, 233–34; Hunan sheng sheyingjia xiehui, “Wu Zhenchao.”
Hu writes: “In the ‘Time’ section of the exhibition, there are some historical images, especially those reflecting the period of the Great Leap Forward and the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ from which a discerning eye can see in one glance for which kind of need they were staged. It was a time when politics were emphasized, everything served politics, and political photography reigned supreme. Even though photos were taken of life circumstances that originally did not exist, once they became images, they turned into an authentic material being, but a material being also full of historical information. From these photographs, future generations not only receive information about the ‘forced cheerfulness’ of those people of those times and those places, but also get an impression of those people's true humanity; they not only get a glimpse of the appearance of a boastful and disturbed era, but can also appreciate the complete significance of the independent image.” “Yingxiang zhong de renwen Zhongguo,” 13. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
Hu, “Yingxiang zhong de renwen Zhongguo,” 13. Translated from Chinese by authors of this article.
