Vintage Photo Collection. Volume 1

Author: Shi Tiesheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: The birth of photography provided people with a vivid and stable reference for understanding history. Compared to written records, photographs are often more direct and certain. With the click of a camera's shutter, a scene of history is frozen just like this. "Old Photographs" attempts to make changes in this regard, placing photographs at the center of observation and letting the photographs speak for themselves. Sometimes, the words and meanings contained in a photograph far exceed what a few simple historical conclusions can encompass. Only by acknowledging and listening to the words of the photograph can history become vivid and lively. "Old Photographs" has always been intentional in presenting historical details. This is partly related to the characteristics of photographs themselves, because any photograph is composed of numerous details. Even an ordinary family photograph reveals every expression, style of clothing, and object in the scene, making it impossible to hide anything. It can be said that displaying old photographs is displaying the details of history. This applies to photographs. The narrative of details is also evident in the text of "Old Photographs." In this issue, Mr. Sanmu's "Teacher-Disciple Relationship in Different Eras" features a student's "greeting" to a teacher during the Cultural Revolution. This person not only fails to observe the etiquette of a "disciple" but speaks to the teacher in a tutorial tone, full of misspellings and crude language, worthy of being included in the modern "Laughing Forest." Ma Siyao's "Grandpa" writes about the Great Famine in the early 1960s: "Grandpa developed edema, and pressing his limbs left indentations. He couldn't work during the day and had to lean against the wall to walk. At night, Grandpa sat with a few elderly men, also suffering from edema, on a heated kang, a large pot placed on the ground, filled with a few soybeans and lamb bones picked up from the roadside, boiled into a soup said to cure edema. The old men drank the soup, chatted, and stayed up until dawn." The detail revealed here conveys the persistence of survival and the demeanor of "the old men drinking the soup, chatting, and staying up until dawn," which is exactly the "alphabet of life" referred to by the French Roland Barthes. It is like a series of jumping notes, playing a moving symphony of life. The meaning conveyed by this detail cannot be covered by any of the various historical conclusions about that famine. Details are like a magnifying glass for history, making dusty years and hazy past events vividly apparent. What "Old Photographs" does is merely provide a small stand for this magnifying glass.