Highlights from Li Zhensheng’s Witness: The Archive of Cultural Revolution

The exhibition showcases, for the first time in Southeast Asia, over 100 images illuminating insights into the tumultuous event, interspersed with intimate documentations of Li’s life as a young Chinese grappling with times of great flux and uncertainty.

The exhibition opened at The Arts House on 9 September, the 40th death anniversary of Mao Zedong. A day later, Li conducted a candid and informative tour of his exhibition to some thirty participants. The following are highlights from the tour.

“During the Cultural Revolution, only positive aspects would be published and featured. Anything negative was not permitted. Images depicting struggle sessions, dunce caps, destruction of property and places of worship are seen as smearing black, i.e., denouncement of the Cultural Revolution. As a photojournalist, I understood that both good and bad are co-existing and complementary. Unfortunately exhibitions in China even today focuses only on the good.” – Li Zhensheng

quoted from invisiblephotographer.asia