Book gives China’s rural photographers their due

 

Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn

In 1958 Zhao’s father was charged with maintaining illicit relations with a foreign country and sentenced to seven years in prison for working with the Japanese. When his father was released in 1965, he soon became caught up in the “cultural Revolution” (1966-1976) and suffered dearly.

Li Jianxing in Bozhou, Anhui province, is 85 years old. He recalls the hardest days in his life were when he was denounced as a rightist in 1957. "Before that (the anti-rightist campaign), I was a deputy manager in a State-run photo studio, with a monthly salary of 45 yuan ($7.26). 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 I was rehabilitated by the government 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 in the book worked for State-owned photo studios in their hometowns.

This is an aging population, Wang says, and "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."