Chinese Photos at the Millennium

In the People’s Republic of China between 1949 and 1978, photography’s principal function was to serve the government by presenting idealized images of life under Chairman Mao and communist rule. Access to photographic equipment was reserved primarily for official publications and purposes. In 1978, as China opened to global trade, individuals began to earn money, and those with funds could finally purchase cameras and supplies. Initially, photographers produced documentary images, but the pursuit of the medium as artistic personal expression gradually flowered.

At the turn of the millennium, a new generation of Chinese artists—many initially trained as painters—revolted against traditional fine art photography. Instead, they heeded the influence of Western artists who had dissolved the boundaries between photography, performance art, conceptual art, and installation. This exhibition presents works from the museum’s collection by eight key artists from that generation, which was the first to bring photography into the foreground of Chinese contemporary art.

Born between 1962 and 1969, these artists grew up during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). Conformity was the dominant social value. Past intellectual products—whether artistic, family history, or documentary—were banned and destroyed. The artists also experienced the cultural vacuum that followed this erasure. As adults, they lived in a radically different China—newly prosperous, individualistic, and consumerist. Refocusing Photography demonstrates the breadth and variety of the explorations of these eight artists. 

Hai Bo’s Middle School (1999) illuminates one shift in social values. The artist gathered his school chums to restage a portrait taken during the Cultural Revolution. Mao jackets and cropped haircuts have given way to individualistic choices. In Hello Mr. Hong (1998), Hong Hao underlines China’s growing materialism by inserting his own image into the type of photographs of luxurious environments found in lifestyle magazines.

Zhang Huan studied classical ink painting, Western drawing and painting, and art history but turned to performance art to examine philosophical issues, such as what sets humans apart from animals. He performed the 1/2 Series (1998) just for his camera. He photographed himself wearing the ribs of an animal carcass, then wearing them again with thoughts on poetry and culture calligraphed on his body to suggest that language and art set us apart from our fellow creatures. “Half of a person is his body and the other half is his soul,” says Zhang.

Rong Rong exposed the squalor of Beijing’s East Village, an unofficial artists’ community, while documenting its inhabitants’ radical artworks. Chen Jiagang’s romantic, cinematic mash-up conflates China in the 1920s and in the 1950s, contrasting vividly with the harsh reality of Qi Sheng’s presentation of the emotional cost of exile. Wang Jinsong’s grid of portraits of one-child families assumes a neutral tone quite different from Liu Zheng’s insistently probing views of dispossessed and marginalized citizens. These eight artists used new visual idioms to address their country’s recent history, its swift societal transformation, and their own resultant shift in identity as Chinese.