Between ideology and conceptuality : aesthetics of photo-reportage in early Mao's China /cby Christie Hei Yuen Wong

Abstract

This dissertation investigates the aesthetics of photography during the Great Leap Forward in Mao’s China by tracing the photographer’s subjectivity and, accordingly, how the nature of the photograph was understood as part of the construction of a new socialist paradigm. The study examines written discourse between three photography publications run by Xinhua News Agency and the China Photographic Academy. By examining the discussion in these publications in 1958 surrounding the ‘red and expert’ concept, it is proposed that aesthetic acumen emerged as the critical professional skill for propaganda communication. The public subjectivity of professional photographers indicates the irreconcilable problem of the necessity of intellectuals in Maoism. This study identifies common compositional strategies that denoted collectivity and the Party’s power in Maoist aesthetics and consider the meaning of the photographer's agency within this discourse. It is proposed that within the limited context of the Maoist propaganda sphere and despite the separation between intellectual-proletarian photographers and the labouring classes, compositions which eluded to the body of the photographer were able to identify the photographer’s position as a mediator between the Party and proletariat, opening up the possibility of working towards an actual proletarian aesthetics. By examining the logic of socialist realist photography at this time, the close relationship between aesthetics and politics is revealed, which has implications for approaches to the real in the latter half of the twentieth century and for the construction of a documentary discourse in China.