Abstract:


This talk attempts to read Sha Fei’s photographs from the perspectives of war history and image studies so as to reexamine the war paradigm of the Chinese nationalist war. Sha Fei’s works presented the institutional perspective and institutional style in visualizing the war paradigm. The perspective and style were shaped in a complex process of communication and negotiation between the Party’s ideological guidance and Sha Fei’s artistic romanticism, between the war's propagandist requirements and Sha Fei’s photographic realism, and between the CCP’s discourse of the war and the GMD’s discourse of the war. This process, involving conflicts, compromises, and interactions, enabled Sha Fei’s visual images, rather than verbal accounts by other people, to offer more insights into the war. Finally, discussing the psychological impact of shooting war atrocities on photographers (especially on Sha Fei), I argue that both the war and the bureaucratic politics victimized the pioneer revolutionary photographer.


Biography:


Professor Gao has previously been an Assistant Professor at Peking University and Newport News University. He has written three books: Meeting Technology's Advance: Social Changes in China and Zimbabwe in the Railway Age (1997), The Communist Takeover of Hangzhou: The Transformation of City and Cadre, 1949-1954 (2004), and Historical Dictionary of Modern China, 1800-1949 (2009). He has also published several articles including "The Call of the Oases: The 'Peaceful Liberation' of Xingjiang, 1949-1953," "Shooting Social Suffering: Photography and China’s Human Disasters," "War Culture, Nationalism, and Political Campaigns, 1950-53," "Rediscovery of Western Science and Technology and Definition of Chinese Foreign Policy," "From Rural Revolution to Urban Revolutionization: A Case Study of Luzhongnan," and “Eating, Cooking and Shanghai ‘Less-manly Men’: Social Consequence of the Food Rationing and Economic Reforms.”