This talk is organized in conjunction with exhibit of photographs on China’s Cultural Revolution by Li Zhensheng, author of “Red-Color News Soldier” on display in North Gate Gallery at the Graduate School of Journalism.

The Cultural Revolution and Li Zhensheng

The ideological tsunami that swept mainland China between 1966 and 1976, killing hundreds of thousands of people and destroying the lives of tens of millions of others, was initiated by Mao Zedong, the “Great Teacher, Great Leader, Great Commander and Great Helmsman,” who on May 16, 1966, officially unleashed the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” to attack those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the party, the government, the army, and all spheres of culture, [and] to clear them out.”

Soon children were set against parents, and students against teachers. Intellectuals and artists were systematically purged, and political and personal vendettas were settled under the cover of ideological purity.

From the poorest peasant attending a “struggle session” to the “class enemy” who, in response, would bow his head, the early years of the Cultural Revolution took on the appearance of a theater where the viewers increasingly became part of the play. Armbands and flags, banners and big-character posters, and Little Red Books turned into props. The whole of China became a stage dominated by an invisible diva whose omnipresence seeped into every corner of society.

A quarter century later, Li Zhensheng’s photographs made their first appearance. Faces and places suddenly took on names, and the photographer made it all seem so human that these events from far away and long ago became universal, all too familiar. Li was not merely in the right place at the right time; he was also the right photographer.

Trained as a cinematographer, he produced panoramic constructions of diptychs and triptychs, and employed an agile point-counterpoint that moves inconspicuously between victims and persecutors, capturing perfectly the scripted celluloid quality of the revolution, at once ritualistic and utterly modern.

Robert Pledge
Co-author of Li Zhensheng’s “Red-Color News Soldier” (Phaidon)