208
the photographs on the period between 1956 and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (Rihoud was again there in 1964 and 1965, and also Rene Rurri) may serve as an example that will encourage purchasing, or at any rate borrowing, this fine book. Of and about these in the context of their time, Professor Spence has commented as follows (pp. 12-13):
This was truly a time in which revolutionary changes were being attempted by China's leaders, and with the Communist party already close to twenty million people in numbers one would expect dramatic evidence of the new society, or at least of its emerging foundations.
But as we scan the photographs, we realize how hard such evidence is to capture. Without deep and intimate knowledge of the past realities, how can we truly gauge the depth, the nature or the meaning of the attempted change from the visual record? What we do get here, and often brilliantly or poignantly, is the sense of a country and a people with very little to rely on, where everything is scarce so everything is valued.
The word poverty seems the wrong one, in the context, for to China's leaders and surely to many of the people themselves after what they had gone through it was survival that was the first priority. Yet the paradox here was that the Great Leap Forward brought not survival but death to millions.
At other levels, the images speak to us of ordinary things, of children and their games, of the quiet affections of age, of eating as shared relaxation. They speak also, insistently, of organization, of people in lines, of people listed, people marched to orders, people drilled. This the state was proud of, this the state allowed to be filmed, along with the work, the heavy manual work, whether of intellectuals or peasants, backing endlessly at the heavy soil of China with mattocks and hoes, hauling barrows and sacks, pitting muscle against the land. So have farmers the world over laboured, but here the Chinese seem assembled in larger numbers than ever before, and their labour is in a context that is politically orchestrated.
208
the photographs on the period between 1956 and the beginning of the Cultural Revolution (Rihoud was again there in 1964 and 1965, and also Rene Rurri) may serve as an example that will encourage purchasing, or at any rate borrowing, this fine book. Of and about these in the context of their time, Professor Spence has commented as follows (pp. 12-13):
This was truly a time in which revolutionary changes were being attempted by China's leaders, and with the Communist party already close to twenty million people in numbers one would expect dramatic evidence of the new society, or at least of its emerging foundations.
But as we scan the photographs, we realize how hard such evidence is to capture. Without deep and intimate knowledge of the past realities, how can we truly gauge the depth, the nature or the meaning of the attempted change from the visual record? What we do get here, and often brilliantly or poignantly, is the sense of a country and a people with very little to rely on, where everything is scarce so everything is valued.
-
The word poverty seems the wrong one, in the context, for to China's leaders and surely to many of the people themselves after what they had gone through
it was survival that was the first priority. Yet the paradox here was that the Great Leap Forward brought not survival but death to millions.
At other levels, the images speak to us of ordinary things, of children and their games, of the quiet affections of age, of eating as shared relaxation. They speak also, insistently, of organization, of people in lines, of people listed, people marched to orders, people drilled. This the state was proud of, this the state allowed to be filmed, along with the work, the heavy manual work, whether of intellectuals or peasants, backing endlessly at the heavy soil of China with mattocks and hoes, hauling barrows and sacks, pitting muscle against the land. So have farmers the world over laboured, but here the Chinese seem assembled in larger numbers than ever before, and their labour is in a context that is politically
orchestrated.
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