Nudes fight back against propaganda in China
18th April 2015,
Sex rears its head at the beginning and end of the absorbing 'Chinese Photobook' exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery and is firmly squashed in the middle section.
Daniel Nelson
China Traffic Police (Shanghai: Traffic Administration Bureau, Public Security)
Image by PHotographer's Gallery
The first of the show's six sections, From Empire to the People’s Republic of China (1900-1949), contains a wonderfully Orientalist picture of a nude woman as a sitting Buddhist. Such fantasies are pushed firmly aside in the next sections — Manchuria and the Sino-Japanese War (1931-1947), The Image of a New China (1945-1966), State Publishing: The Cultural Revolution and Beyond (1966-present) — in which war, political image-building and socialist exhortation take over.
Japan's photobooks promoted its military and after the Japanese surrender and the establishment of communist rule, propaganda rapidly took over, with state monopoly imposed and private publications banned.
After Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 and the loosening of the bonds by Deng Xiaoping a renaissance begins: ‘unofficial’ publishing and self-publications start to flourish, discussions on the nature of photography are held, artistic communities are formed, a manifesto declares that photography "will not have to exist in 'important subject matter' or 'official ideology'" — and nudes return. But so does documentary photography, as the camera captures destructive "renovations" that are sweeping away historic remains to make way for easy-access tourist attractions.
There are few great images in the exhibition but it's full of interesting pictures: the Great Chairman - Chiang, not Mao — in 1946; Lin Biao, Mao's disgraced successor, with a white cross stuck over his face; revolutionary dancers leaping across the stage with rifles at the ready; an officially approved version of the Tiananmen Square massacre that was itself later banned.
A serious, fascinating exhibition.
+ Also at the Photographer's Gallery: the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2015 includes Zanele Muholi's portraits and testimonies of the South African LGBTI community, and Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse's collaborative album of images and text which uncover the history of a once elite, now abandoned high-rise apartment block in Johannesburg.
The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the gallery on 28 May.
• The Chinese Photobook, until 5 July, and Deutsche Börse Photography Prize until 7 June, The Photographers' Gallery, 16-18 Ramillies Street, W1, Mon–Sat 10am 6pm, Thu 10–8pm, Sun 11.30am-6pm. Info: info@tpg.org.uk/ 7087 9300.
