Staging Sha Fei's "Close Combat".

Is it possible to post a breathtaking photo online without being accused of image manipulation?

After the South China Tiger debacle (which no one now wants to take responsibility for) and suspicions that the Chang'e moon photo was fabricated, to recent revelations that an award-winning photo by Liu Weiqiang of Tibetan antelope racing under the Qinghai-Tibet railway was actually a composite, it seems like everyone on the Internet is an expert at spotting the traces of a Photoshop job.

In response to the Liu Weiqiang scandal, Wenzhou-based journalist Zhang Xiang'ou has been posting a series of articles on his blog examining the lack of a concrete distinction between news and propaganda in China. One example he brings up comes from the work of Sha Fei, a renowned photographer who joined the Eight Route Army as a photojournalist and shot a number of iconic works in the 1930s and 40s, including the last images of Lu Xun before his death.

The images at left (click for all three), titled "Close Combat" (肉搏, 1938), could possibly be scenes from the battlefield, but upon inspection, they are obviously staged. Zhang writes:

[When I first saw them], I wondered whether they may not have been shot on the battlefield. Perhaps this was training, or a movie set. Later, I looked carefully through Collected Works of Sha Fei and discovered a number of similar sets of photographs, but there were practically no real scenes of fighting.

So I asked Sha Fei's daughter, Wang Yan, and senior members of the photography community to determine the "true face" of the photographs, and the response was all negative—they were not taken at the scene.

So then they were staged! I was taken aback—how could the famous Sha Fei stage his photographs? This wasn't something that a journalist ought to do! But now I understand why: the images that Sha Fei shot were not all news photos that reflected the course of the war; they were propaganda photos meant to promote the Eighth Route Army's war against the Japanese to the outside world. Even though Sha Fei was a photojournalist, when he shot these propaganda photos, he was just a propaganda photographer.

In that era, with the equipment and talent that Yan'an had available, the Eighth Route Army could not have let Sha Fei really go to the front lines; even if he had an overwhelming desire to do so, he still could only stage re-enactments of battle conditions from where he was positioned behind the field of battle. Human resources were limited, and the safety of those photographers was paramount! Recognizing this historical background, I feel that what he did is understandable. The problem lies in the fact that when Sha Fei is mentioned, we seldom see behind the curtain of history.

Think about it: if people had looked at Close Combat with the same joy that they brought to Liu Weiqiang's photo only to discover that it was posed, and if they did not understand the historical conditions and the particular limitations that Sha Fei was operating under, they would likely misunderstand both Sha Fei and the history of the Eighth Route Army's war effort. This is not something that anyone wishes to see happen.

Even so, I am still grateful that Collected Works of Sha Fei included this set of three photos, because if it had only included one image, I as a reader would never have had the opportunity to doubt.

In a subsequent blog post, Zhang Xiang'ou recalled his days spinning propaganda for the People's Daily:

The city I live in, Wenzhou, launched yet another major campaign a few days ago to clean up the Wenruitang River. We learn from the local media that over the next four years, four steps will be taken to overhaul 29 fetid streams in urban Wenzhou, so that by 2011 all of the stench and pollution will be eliminated.

Reading this news, I felt as if I had been given a stinging slap to the face. Wenzhou started a management project for the Wenruitang River back in October, 2000, and announced great results a long time ago. Back then, I was a reporter attached to the central China branch agency, stationed in Wenzhou; the following year, my superiors tasked me with writing an article about the river clean-up, for publication in the central China section of the People's Daily. The article, "How could this ditch be so clear?" extolled the swiftness with which the Wenzhou goverment and party committee had achieved significant results through their brilliant policy and management work. That article has been a weight on my mind all these years, because for seven years, filthy water continues to flow in the streams that I see before me.

When I entered the journalism profession, I set a standard for myself: I can write flawed reports because of errors in knowledge, but I cannot turn out articles that violate morality and justice. However, our reporters' station back then was also responsible for bullshit business tasks: sometimes, in order to facilitate good relations on all sides, we had to write propaganda stuff for various departments. I was in charge of news-gathering and editing, so I took on the majority of those tasks.

Of course, I am not repenting of my entire life at the reporters' station; rather, I regret the highly undisciplined work ethic I applied to propaganda work during my time there. I did no real interview, using instead whatever documents and clippings were provided to assemble a cut-and-paste report. And I relied heavily on a piece of software called MaxReader (丹青), which could take a scan of a printout and convert it directly to text. I didn't even need to retype it—I could simply edit the text into a new document. I violated my own internal standards and became so unprincipled mainly because I felt that these propaganda articles I was writing wouldn't be taken seriously anyway. When I wrote critical articles, I had to face questions from the people involved, but that wasn't really a danger with these uncritical reports. Doing too many propaganda articles gives one a charmed, irresponsible attitude.

There's no question that "How could this ditch be so clear?" was the result of cutting and pasting official documents and news clippings—it didn't even have any general quotes. If, seven years ago, my announcement that "Wenzhou's water management has achieved great results" were true, then naturally we wouldn't have another massive management campaign in 2008. But in this harmonious society, will the media pursue the question of how much of the taxpayers' money was spent on water management over the last eight years, and who is ultimately responsible for its failure? So with this in mind, my remorse may seem to some people to be too much of a show; unnecessary, even. I write this here not only to express my remorse over my frivolous work ethic in the past, but more importantly, because this memory is the key that allows me to unlock a door behind which I will finally discover the answer to this question: why do we have so many fake photographs?

"Love in the Time of SARS" by Qiu Yan.

Taking a look back at problem photographs over the past three years, I found that they all share one common point: they are all photos that promote the main propaganda theme. Perhaps the fabricators did not expect that their photographs, reflecting as they do the prosperity of the country, the stability of the people, and the flourishing, harmonious era in which we live, would be singled out for scrutiny.

I posted "Did Sha Fei fake a photograph?" yesterday, and there's one point that I ought to explain: Sha Fei is definitely a pioneer for those of us working in photojournalism, but pioneers are certainly not perfect. If he is simply deified without an objective consideration of the facts, then our our understanding of Sha Fei himself, of history, and of news photography will all be affected. From Sha Fei to Liu Weiqiang, we see a heritage of the conceptual confusion between "news" and "propaganda". The glory of one generation is a disgrace for the next. Is this not enough to give us pause?

If the main voice of propaganda were to seek truth from facts, then it would, as a matter of course, put an stop to the repugnance that people have for "the main theme." But truth be told, in today's environment of exaggerated public morality, it's probably a bit too idealistic to think of accomplishing that. As someone who's also in the news profession, I deeply understand the difficulties you face—propaganda photographs must be taken, after all. But this is the heart of the problem: stage them if you have to, shoot what you need to, do them up right—but always remember: they're just propaganda photos! You want to enter them into some news award competition? They're no different from Edison Chen's sex photos that are on the Internet! In both cases, something that should not have seen the light of day has been forced out under the sun. Edison may have been framed, but you've done this to yourselves.

We ought to be understanding and forgiving of Sha Fei, working as he was in those difficult historical conditions. But as for today's muddleheads, we should not permit them to profit in troubled times. We must be firm in our insistence that people like Qiu Yan and Zhang Liang,* who shamelessly fabricated "harmonious SARS" and "harmonious bird flu" photos, are not to be tolerated. For they stand in front of generation after generation of descendants, and we must not let them hand down a heritage of shame.

"Plaza Pigeons Innoculated Against Avian Flu" by Zhang Liang

Postscript: Let me state here my opinion on the Zhang Liang photo: even if that pigeon was not added afterward, it's still not a real photograph. Is that the way to give pigeons shots, when they're all flying around? How many can you do a day? Would you really work like that instead of saving effort and working right at the pigeon coop? It's entirely staged—there's no need to argue over the question of a single pigeon. That something like this can be awarded a prize says only that the China Journalistic Photo Competition isn't serious at all.

Note: Qiu Yan's image of a bride and groom crossing a street wearing masks against SARS won a World Press Photo award in 2004, after which the subjects of the photo said that they were models whom Qiu had paid to stage the scene (see this Beijing Today story). Zhang Liang won an award for his image of pigeons flying above a Harbin plaza while a vet innoculates them against avian flu. Chinese netizens accused Zhang of Photoshopping the birds onto the background (see ESWN's story).

See also: Imagethief, Scandalous death of a propaganda image.