When I meet foreign scholars who study Chinese
photography before, they will be puzzled and asked how the people in the photos
are so easy to laugh when talking about smiles in mainstream publicity photos
extending from seventeen years to nowdays. In a photography exhibition seminar
on "educated youth - through the weight of time” recently, the topics of the
speakers concentrated on the production of the smiles in photography and they
gave many explanations.
For example, the local photography commentator Sunkai who
had written a long article for the educated youth photography exhibition catalog
of Tang Desheng held that " As people always prefer the crisp, beautiful
scenery rather than dark and gloomy image, smiling face is the periapt to
resist depression, frustration, anger, prevent self-degradation in a difficult
years, it is also an auspicious picture of ideal future that the people and the
photographer prayer commonly."
And as the exhibition curator of Tang Desheng’s educated
youth photography, Frenchman Bérénice Angremy held that, “Tang Desheng’s
framing was based on the only visible the political publicity photo standard”,
this mode and aesthetic included the 1920s Soviet propaganda mode. Obviously, her
evaluation opened a historical perspective for the production of smile.
What I spoke at the meeting was that one reason which could
not be ignored was the discipline of invisible power on people. We were taught
to give a smile when taking pictures since we were children. Therefore, we saw
that a lot of portrait photography was filled with smiling faces. Despite the
twists and turns of life itself, those portrait photos never had bleak
melancholy. So, although those educated youth who appeared in the Tang Desheng’
photos had sorts of resentment, hopelessness and even despair in the real world,
but when it came to potographing photos as a political task, when they faced the
camera lens, they often exposed teeth involuntarily.
Today people might question the authenticity behind the
smile at that time. Honestly, if we studied the production of the photographic
image at the time now(including smile photo), there were already many
difficulties. This fully discussion has the necessity. The basic consensus was
that despite the "smiling face" in these photos, it would never make these
"smiling faces" gave historical illusion to posterity. In addition to
photography skills, a variety of special effects functions of image processing
software, the collocation of color and picture clip could give you more good photo effects.
