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Red: China’s Cultural Revolution

This is a sole-authored book derived from an extensive research on the visual phenomena of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-76) across the country. The book constructs a framework for discussions on more than 120 images including photographic works by ten leading photojournalists at that time and those important published images by anonymous authors. As a sole-author of the book, the researcher carried out a substantial study, designed the structure of book, selected images and developed the text.

China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was launched by the Chinese Communist Party in May 1966 and it ended with the death of Mao in 1976. The ten years of upheaval can now be seen as a great tragedy, which has been acknowledged within China itself as a ‘cultural desert’ in the nation’s intellectual history. The scale of the human cost remains unknown. This book has challenged our conventional dismissal of these bleak years, by uncovering extraordinary visual dynamics. It has brought to light incredible photographs of the period together with painting, graphics and even images of dance.

This is the first study to place the imagery of the period. It argues that the ‘art’ of the Cultural Revolution, which has been considered merely political propaganda and largely ignored from the Chinese art history, in fact eliminated any distinction between artists and the masses and became in fact one of the most significant visual phenomena internationally in the twentieth century.