The "Grey Zone": The Emergence of Self-Organised Photography Groups in Post-Mao Beijing, 1977-1988

Abstract

After the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), China launched the "thought liberation movement (Sixiang Jiefang Yundong)" and the policy of economic reform and opening-up (gaige kaifeng), on the one hand to comfort the cadres and intellectuals persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, on the other hand, to rebuild and modernise the nation. Under the ensuing relatively relaxed social and political environment, the younger generation started exploring new artistic practices, distinct from the official discourse. Through the study of five amateur photography groups, namely the Friday Salon, the April Fifth photographers, the April Photo Society, the Fission Group, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) Student Photography Association, active in Beijing between 1977 and 1988, this research argues self-organised collectives were an effective means for well-resourced amateurs to break through the dominant ideological practices of photography and search for alternative discourses in image-making. These different formats of self-organisation, including home study workshop, editorial group for publication, an informal photo society for public exhibitions, formation of a liupai (school of thoughts) and student interest club, all provided communal spaces for such collectives to emerge from the private to the public sphere. Borrowing an Eastern European the "grey zone" as a conceptual framework, this research shows how such informal groups navigated a "grey zone" between the so-called "unofficial" and "official," and informal and institutional, and questions the binary approach in current writings on art groups in China during the 1980s. I argue that such fluid sphere of the "grey zone" helps pluralised photographic practice and discourse in the 1980s, which sheds light on the emergence of "conceptual photography" in contemporary art from the mid-1990s in China, coinciding with deepening reforms. Show more