Can ordinary citizen’s photos be sublime? 

In the words of “Imageless” publisher, “History of Life is a collection of 415 restored photographs chronicling the history of modern China, from 1910s to the late 1990s. Compiled from over 600,000 negatives, Cai Dongdong curated the book using salvaged negatives from ordinary Chinese citizens and public records which he developed, scanned and selected. Adding a few of his own pictures into the story, the artist crafted his interpretation of the birth and growth of modern China over 3 of the country’s most formative eras: the founding of the Republic, the cultural revolution, and the post-Mao era.

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

In the artist’s own words, “These images carry the memory of Chinese people. Memories are the only way to establish life. The process of forming this memory symbolizes how I visualize history. Visualization is the only way to understand facts.”

The book highlights, through common citizen’s eyes, three dramatic and critical periods of XXth Century China. However, and perhaps here relies the most interesting part of this photobook, the selected photos do not express and avoid “propaganda” or “foreign view” stereotypes, but mostly focus on standard daily life of common citizens, sometimes facing leisure and entertainment moments, others facing stress or even conflict moments.

“History of Life” also allows us to realize how, further to traditional Chinese painting and drawing tools, some of the world’s photographic aesthetics and composition standards were spread and adopted by these anonymous Chinese photographers. It is interesting how such new aesthetic language in photography also influenced Chinese contemporary artists such as painter Zhang Xiaogang, and others.

In brief, “History of Life” is a delicate and essential testimony of common daily life within XXth Century China, further to providing us with an essential glimpse of vernacular Chinese photography!

Technical data: 

• Publisher: Imageless, China, 2021 (https://imageless.cn)

• Hard cover binding

• 17x22cm

• 500 pages (415 photos)

• Limited Edition of 700 copies