Cristina de Middel Changsha, Hunan province, China. July 2013.
"In 2013 I went back to China to complete the images needed to finish my book, PARTY. I was looking for symbols of communism that I could put in context
(...) with the new liberal feel of the Red Republic. I stayed in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, where Mao was born; it was also one of the provinces most affected by the famine resulting from the Great Leap Forward. Changsha is home to the biggest statue of Mao in China, it stands on an island in the Xiang River, where Mao and his friends would go swim as young men.
Monuments are made to trigger the remembrance of greatness and work effectively as long as everyone agrees to remember and facts remain true. I tried to find angles that could express the awkward presence of communism, as it exists now in China, hiding and disfiguring the founder of the new nation with whatever I could find between me and the 800 tons of granite of Mao as a young man."
- Cristina de Middel © Cristina de Middel | Magnum Photos
