One Hundred Flowers Blooming
When French photographer, Marc Riboud, first came to China back in 1957 Chairman Mao had just proclaimed an opening up of the country’s cultural life in a campaign known as the “Hundred Flowers Campaign”. Though this cultural awakening would be a short-lived phenomenon, Riboud was on the spot to capture it with his trusty camera. The resulting photographs are currently on display in Shanghai.
Though time may have slowed Marc Riboud, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, it has done nothing to dim the impact of the photographs he took in China over three decades of Mao’s rule.
First arriving for a four-month trip in January of 1957, Riboud was granted a unique opportunity to document life in China at this time with his unparalleled eye for geometry and composition.
“Having traveled to China 22 times Marc Riboud is not an unfamiliar figure for Chinese audiences, but I have gathered a lot of materials and I thought that the most amazing work he has done would probably be his first visit in China in 1957,” gallerist Jean Loh said of his decision to exhibit this series of photographs from Riboud’s inaugural trip to China in Beaugeste Gallery’s ongoing “Marc Riboud’s Hundred Flowers” exhibition.
“At the time he was completely unfamiliar with China so his eyes were wide-open and he got so many iconic photographs. So I started the selection with him and he guided me to pictures he loved.”
Obviously attracted to the rich cultural awakening China was undergoing during this first visit, Riboud’s subjects are captured partaking in numerous activities that had been banned when the Communist government came to power in 1949 and would again be quashed following the Hundred Flowers campaign, when the “Great Leap Forward” came into effect the following year.
Monks celebrating religious festivals, young men practicing Tai Chi and other martial arts, chess games, ballet and piano lessons – all would later to be denounced as bourgeois and part of the “Four Olds” by Mao’s government. Riboud captured them all in his photographs, accompanied by a glow of innocence which, with hindsight one is led to muse would soon be dimmed by the decades of upheaval to follow.
“These [cultural pursuits] are something that disappeared after the Communists came to power in 1949. A lot of the folk arts were pretty much banned until 1957 when Mao said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom,”” Loh explained.
“These photographs are a case of the right man being in the right place at the right time.”
In past exhibitions featuring photographs of “old China” Loh has curated, including a major retrospective of Riboud’s career which was launched in Shanghai in 2010 and has since traveled to 14 cities around the country, the gallerist says people are inevitably moved by reminders of a time that, in many ways, was much simpler than today.
“Photography moves me as a witness of a historical moment. Things change so fast, especially in China, but the photo remains. Most of time when I do exhibitions about “old China” it’s very popular,” Loh said.
However, although the documentation of this particular time period of China’s tumultuous 20th century history was part of the appeal for Loh, the historical elements are equaled in importance by the artistic merits of the photographs he exhibits.
“This is my personal penchant, I’m not a sociologist or historian and I’m not running a photo agency so I’m not interested in running a purely documentary series,” Loh said.
“It’s my personal inclination to consider – even if you are working on documenting real world issues such as the environment, AIDS, poverty and war – your picture still has to be a good picture. It still has to combine a touching, poignant scene with the artistic, framing it with a certain light and composition, seizing the moment and making it an artistic image.”
Luckily for him, the work of Marc Riboud features both historical and artistic significance in spades. And luckily for us, Riboud’s China is currently hanging from the walls of Beaugeste Gallery for us to experience for ourselves.
“Marc Riboud’s Hundred Flowers” is showing every weekend until 10 November at Beaugeste Gallery, Room 519, 5F, Building 5, Lane 210 Taikang Lu, near Sinan Lu. Tel: 6466 9012. Web: www.beaugeste-gallery.com
