(Photograph) - Red-Color News Soldier (Phaidon Press, pound;24.99) is an illuminating and unique photographic collection charting life during China’s Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976.
At great personal risk, for 40 years photojournalist Li Zhensheng (from whose official creditation the title comes) hid thousands of images, including this one of children taking part in China’s national day parade in October 1966, which today form the only known photographic record of the entire period.
Meticulously captioned and arranged in chronological order, they document the public denunciations, the Red Guard rallies, the “re-education” of “bourgeois elements” - all overseen by the ever-present image of the Great Helmsman, Chairman Mao Tse-tung - that have come to characterise this turbulent and brutal chapter in Chinese history.
