Caught on camera

Portraits of China's rural photographers come to light

Over the past half a century, rural photographers have been taking pictures of peasants and people in Chinese towns and villages. Despite this work, these photographers have long been ignored, going unrecognized by official photography institutes.

But they emerged in 2014 thanks to Wang Yong, who featured them in his book, Photographer Coming to Village, which is a history of rural photographers.

Wang, 38, spent three years interviewing photographers scattered in the small towns situated at the junction of Central China's four eastern provinces: Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu.

Their faces become clear in his book, often showing them to be humble, brave and reserved. Their sorrows and glories become concrete in their photography.

They come from a variety of educational backgrounds. Some are self-taught or learned their trade from family members or from Western missionaries. Others learned their craft from Japanese businessmen.

Zhao Xiuting, 60, a photographer from Minquan, Henan province, recalls that his father learned photography at a Japanese photo studio. He started working there around 1930, at age 12, and opened his own studio six years later.

But Zhao says those years of working with the Japanese led his father to be sentenced in 1958 to seven years in prison, charged with maintaining illicit relations with a foreign country. When his father was freed in 1965, he became embroiled in the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and suffered dearly.

Li Jianxing in Bozhou, Anhui province, is 85. He remembers the hardest days of his life were when he was denounced as a rightist in 1957. "Before the anti-rightist campaign, I was a deputy manager in a state-run photo studio, with a monthly salary of 45 yuan. After I was denounced, my salary was cut to 23 yuan. Life became so difficult that I had to give away one of my children. After the government rehabilitated me in the late 1970s, I wrote to the family who adopted my child. I wanted my child back, because I could afford to feed him. Eventually, he returned to me."

After 1956, when China initiated the joint state-private ownership policy - the principal form of state capitalism adopted during the socialist transformation of capitalist enterprises in China - most of the photographers featured in the book worked for state-owned photo studios in their hometowns.

These photographers are aging. Wang says: "It means I am in a race against time to collect their stories. They are old. Some are passing away. In fact, death has taken a few shortly after I interviewed them."

Individually, each of Wang's narratives features a piece of a private life. Together, they project a larger picture about the political and economic landscape of rural China in those years.

Presented in the book along with the photographers' narratives are 370 pictures, hand-painted backdrops, props and photography lights that rural photo studios once used.

Wang Huaiming, a 75-year-old photographer from Anhui, can never forget the heartbreaking scene he saw in Lixin county during the famine of the early 1960s.

One day in 1961, he went to take pictures of sixth-graders in Zhuzhai village. He had arranged to stay with the production team instead of with the peasants. But he still noticed that these houses held "many bodies of the starved, without anyone to carry them away. In some households, whole families perished from hunger."

Despite their grave circumstances people still wanted their picture taken. "Most photos were for certificates or meetings. Not for enjoyment. So, being a photographer, I had work every day."

When Dong Biwu, China's then acting president, came to look into the famine situation in Linquan county, Wang Huaiming was immediately assigned to take pictures as a political task. "Why me? Because I'm a party member, and was young."

In rural central China, it is not customary to keep photographs of strangers. In addition, rural families would burn photos of deceased family members. "The surviving photos in the book, some black and white, some hand colored, were obtained from closed-down studios and flea markets," Wang Yong said.

They open a window for people today to peek into the rural lives of the past, says Jin Yongquan, a photography critic.

Jin, who is also the book's editor, says: "In these pictures, one can easily see the traces of imitation of the way official portraits were taken, in terms of light use, and how to pose and smile for the camera. Yet alongside the imitation of official propaganda pictures, rural photographers also developed and left their own touch on Chinese photography."

Wang Yong said his first photographic work was a pure copy of what was in the People's Daily newspaper. Pointing at a photo taken in 1998, he said: "That picture shows a senior electrician posing like a state leader, with his left hand resting on his hips, while the right hand stretches out. At the time, even me, a photographer with the state power bureau of Yongcheng in Henan province, had no way of knowing what a good picture should look like. I thought those that came out in official newspapers must be good."

However, rural photographers in China were not merely taking pictures, providing photographic services for peasants. Jin says: "They are the creators of rural images and the mainstay of the cultural environment of rural photography. They are the men who educated peasants as to how to appreciate beauty, how to pose for the camera, and gave them an appreciation of backdrop imagery.

"Through the images they made, they established the core of China's rural photographic culture."

Ying Zhaoyun, now 73, is a photographer from Suixi, Anhui province. He remembers the days when he took photos for peasants. "They didn't appreciate a picture with layers of light, believing that only a ghost's face has shades. They wanted their faces like immortals in Chinese paintings, white and smooth, with no shades. So, I normally used flat lighting on their faces."

In those days, having your picture taken was a grand occasion for rural people, especially a photograph depicting a family reunion, so the whole family would discuss the event. They would put on their Sunday best and pick a good day to go to a studio.

"It's like a great ritual," a netizen who identifies themselves as Hand-to-Hand writes after on the Internet after reading Wang's book. "I remember back in 1978. I was a first-grader. One afternoon, my mom rushed to school to take me home for a family photograph. A photographer had arrived in our village. His camera was big, and had a wood stand and a black cloth in front of it. The photographer was hiding in the cloth, with one hand holding a rubber ball in the air, directing us to 'hold still and look over here'. Then I heard 'kata'. He pushed the shutter. The whole process was so great that it felt like a grand ceremony or something. I miss those times."

To a great extent, without rural photographers, many rural families might not otherwise have any family portraits.

But, the sense of mystery that photography once had is more of an ancient legend in rural China today. The ubiquity of smart phones dilutes the power of portraiture. "People can take photos of themselves anytime, anywhere, with smart phones that all have a built-in camera. You hardly feel anything anymore," says Jin.

For China Daily

(China Daily Africa Weekly 04/24/2015 page30)