By Zhang Kun

Zhou Haiying, better known as the son of the famous modern Chinese writer Lu Xun, never considered his photography serious art. It was not until after his death that the pictures he took were exhibited.

More than 230 of Zhou’s pictures, which include important images from modern Chinese history that no one else ever recorded, are on exhibit at the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai.

In the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek announced the founding of a “parliament” without involving China’s then major out-parties, the major leaders of these 13 parties and political groups left the mainland for Hong Kong. Lu’s widow, Xu Guangping and Zhou, who was a teenager at the time, joined them in Hong Kong.

In 1948, the Chinese Communist Party was about to win the civil war against Chiang and his Kuomintang army. As part of the preparation for the founding of new China, the Communist Party decided to invite these party leaders to play a role in the new Chinese government.

It was a secret mission, and no journalist was there to record the historical event. Zhou, 22 at the time, was among them on the voyage to Shenyang, in Northeast China’s Liaoning province.

“Each of them was given some money to buy clothing, as it was cold in Northeastern China,” said Zhu Qi, curator the exhibition. “Zhou spent most of it on a new camera and started to take pictures on the journey.”

These pictures are now the only surviving evidence of the event, the founding of Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

“His portraits of these historical figures, such as Li Jishen and Guo Moruo, captured the people in their most natural being, and his pictures of the political conference in Shenyang show carefully structured composition,” Zhu said. “They are of high artistic and historical value.”

Zhou also took pictures of ordinary people’s daily life in the late 1940s to 1950s, recording the reality of life during this transitional historical period. French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson (1908-2004) took pictures of China in 1948 and 1956.

“Zhou’s pictures are as good as those by the French master,” Zhu said. “Like Bresson advocated, Zhou always tried to capture the decisive moment, and his pictures were dynamic and full of real-life drama.”

Among the daily life pictures, audiences will see a vendor selling food along the street, a physician giving injection to a slim lady in his clinic, and athletes showing off their muscles with their shirts off in a parade calling on young people “build your body and guard our homeland”. Zhu said that they were of “top grade by technique and artistic criteria, world class.”

Later when the political environment turned tense, Zhou stopped taking pictures. He burned most of the developed images, and the negatives were hidden in the bottom of an old trunk.

“My father never thought of his photography as serious art,” said Zhou Lingfei, the photographer’s son, at the opening of the show on Sept 10. “It was his hobby, and he was always humble about it.”

His son said that it was a nice surprise for his father when people showed interest in his pictures.

“He felt sorry that he didn’t manage to get many stories from my grandmother before she died — he worked so hard on the history, and believed the value of his photos lied in historical fact and realism,” his son said.

“It was not until the last few years of his life, people found that behind the public role of the only son of Lu Xun, Zhou had a giant darkroom full of images. He never had the confidence to exhibit them, and he remained dubious about it till his late years, never believing he had reached the climax of photography for his generation,” said Zhu, the curator.