“Liu Zheng: The Chinese” is the title of a book published by Steidl and an exhibition currently on view at Yossi Milo gallery (www.yossimilo.com). This body of work aims to supplant the rosy picture of China created by the socialist realist photography during the Mao Years, with a new grim reality thereby linking present China to its pre-Revolutionary past. In Liu Zheng’s China , smiling workers of the socialist realist era with their eyes directed into bright future are replaced by weary, sometimes crippled, coal miners and convicts of the present. Earnest soldiers of PLA are replaced by mental patients in tattered uniforms. Gone are happy peasants of various ethnic minorities and young intellectual women, cheerfully toiling in the sunlit fields of communal farms. Instead we see provincial girls who sell themselves as dancers, strippers, and models in order to survive in a new market economy. The beneficiaries of this new China make a rare appearance in Mr. Zheng’s photographs. We see their smug faces half covered by masks in “Two Rich Men on New Year’s Eve” or in “A Chinese Girl with a Foreign Friend.”

As a whole, the series is unified by generally consistent photographic method: all pictures were taken with a 501 Hasselblad equipped with Zeiss lenses, using black and white film. In addition, the camera flash with a parabolic reflector that gives a characteristic light fall off pattern, adds a very strong stylistic element. It is reminiscent of photojournalistic photographs done with magnesium or bulb flash with a stylistic resemblance to Diane Arbus, Weegee and others, which is further reinforced by the subject matter. For a western viewer it very easy to see that the subject matter is in fact very similar to that very commonly found in the photographs dating from the middle of nineteenth century to mid twentieth century. At that time, photographic books surveying China were published in the West and the subject matter of those albums, among other things, includes images of peasants, performers, workers, monks --- very same subjects we find in Liu Zheng’s photographs. Except that now it’s the Chinese photographer, not a Westerner, who is behind the camera and the subjects frequently look shabby, unreal, and under rehearsed for the new roles they are forced or trying to play (e.g., “Posing in Ancient Chinese Costumes,” “A Girl Dressed as Courtesan in the Forbidden City”).

Thematically, the series could be subdivided into several major and minor groups. Primarily, those are the images of death, sex, and Chinese history, but also themes that deal with labor, religion, performers, and dislocation of rural population. Each of these themes are connected more or less successfully, however, those who look for an absolutely coherent body of work may find themselves confounded by some photographs whose subject matter appears to have a weak connection with the rest of the series. A case in point is a photograph titled “A Little Girl with Shaved Head.” In the photograph we see a little girl, who appears to be about two or three years old, squatting in such a manner that her loose fitting diapers completely expose her genitals (her pose mirrors that of a young woman in the photograph “A Model at the Academy of Fine Arts ”). Girl’s posture, facial expression, and her shaven head held both by her own hands and by the claw-like fingers of a boy squatting directly behind her produce an image that stands completely on its own and could be only tenuously connected to other image of girls, women, or transsexuals that in various ways offer their bodies either for display or for sale (e.g., “Transsexual Nude,” ”Three Country Strippers,” “Dancers in a Nightclub”).

The best thing about the show is that it allows the viewer to see the photos in 18”x18” format, fairly large for photojournalistic work. Unfortunately, since the space allows for only limited number of works the meaning and the impact of the series is much more evident in the book. In the book, photographs are often arranged in a succession of clever juxtapositions, which create contextual meanings, for example, “Man Posing in Emperor Costume” in which the actor playing the Emperor appears almost farcical as he is placed opposite of “Statues with Chairman Mao” as if underlining the artifice of both imperial and communist regimes.
The impression one is left with after looking at the series is as if nothing has changed since the nineteenth century and that the “conquests” of the communist regime remain only in the form of pathetic vestiges. One wonders if the image of the new China which is put forward by the current government is much like the faces of Chinese opera actors in Liu Zheng’s photographs, freshly painted on the surface, but with signs of decay showing through them.

Jessica D.
August, 2005