Old Photos (Treasure Edition 6)

Author: Liu Ruilin
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 shutter, a scene of history is frozen just like this. "Old Photos" attempts to make changes in this regard, placing photographs at the center of observation and letting them speak for themselves. Sometimes, the messages 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 Photos" has always been dedicated to presenting historical details. This is partly related to the characteristics of photographs themselves, as any single 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 Photos." 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 individual not only failed to observe the etiquette of a "disciple" but spoke to the teacher in a lecturing tone, filled with grammatical errors and crude language, making it worthy of inclusion in a modern "Book of Laughs." Ma Siyao's "Grandpa" describes the Great Famine of the early 1960s: "Grandpa developed edema, and pressing his limbs left indentations. He couldn't work during the day and had to lean on the wall to walk. At night, Grandpa sat with a few elderly men, also suffering from edema, on a heated kang (traditional bed), placing a large pot on the ground filled with a few beans and some sheep bones picked up from the roadside to boil a soup said to cure edema. The old men drank the soup while chatting until dawn." The detail reveals the persistence of survival and the demeanor of the old men "drinking soup while chatting until dawn," which is exactly the "alphabet of life" described by 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 sealed years and blurred past events vividly apparent. What "Old Photos" does is simply provide a small stand for this magnifying glass.