Zhang Dali

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the message and meaning of one photograph is limitless and determined by both context and content. Zhang Dali’s series of photographs of Chinese life titled “A Second History” examines the meaning, production and reproductions of national photography taken during the Mao Tse-tung era.

Dali assembled 94 images from 1931 to the mid-1970s, many of which are duplicates that were doctored in varied ways for different periodicals in China. One great example is “Image 33.” Here a black-and-white photograph of a youthful Chairman Mao undergoes radical transformations in each frame and by the last two, moves from a sepia overlay to even deeper, richer hues in the very last. This reveals the way images can be modified to create larger-than-life figures with the wave of a paintbrush. Other frames evidence the way one photo was reprinted in different magazines with some of the original subjects erased. Most glaring are those of Mao’s funeral in “Image 3.” Here several of the men featured in the original photo have disappeared in another. Dali did not alter any of the photos, but for some he provides the original black-and-white negative along with the original publication of the picture. He authenticates each as a piece of China’s second history by giving them his personal stamp of approval.—Patricia Williams Lessane