Mesmerizing snapshots of 20th century China, saved from oblivion

China’s 20th century was no cake walk. Between British and Japanese imperialism, civil war, famine, and the Cultural Revolution, the country was as turbulent, and oppressive, as anywhere. But a recently assembled archive of photographs shows that even in the midst of tragedy, ordinary people found a way to get by.

China Lost and Found is an effort by Shanghai photographer Sheila Zhao to make sense of the innumerable disposed-of photos she salvages from flea markets in her hometown. That they have been abandoned by their creators matters. Because intimate family snapshots rarely are, we are left speculating on the fate of subjects who, as urbanites of some means, would almost surely have been affected by the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s.

The photographs, which range from cosmopolitan pre-war Shanghai to more modest times in the politically sensitive 1970s and early 1980s, run parallel to the arc of modern Chinese history yet remain separate from its tumultuous events. Though we know nothing about these anonymous subjects, we can see clearly the role of photography as a form of escape and a means for forging identity during times of trauma.

We can also see hints of the global powerhouse China would become. As Zhao writes, “after the Cultural Revolution, a tenuous but growing fascination with ‘western’ goods and thoughts was reemerging.”

But then, domestic snapshots have always indicated more than just personal milestones, and the self-fashioning on display here is important. Firstly, because it disrupts the “sick man of Asia” narrative, and secondly, because it designates the photograph as a site of aspiration amidst upheaval. Geoff Dyer wrote, “to gaze into the camera is to look into the future.” These pictures constitute an insistence on the individual, the banal, the world to come—photography reflects change even as it changes everything.

Photographs courtesy Sheila Zhao from China Lost and Found.