Illustration:
ill. 5.48 b (set: 5.48)
Author:
Jiang Duo (1937-)
Date:
1966
Genre:
photograph
Material:
internet file, grayscale; original source: photograph, gelatin silver print, N. 2 / 10, 60.6 x 50.6 cm.
Source:
Jiang Duo, Witness 2-Chairman Mao Waved Me Forward, 1996 (DACHS 2008 Mao Images, plate 145) , Heidelberg catalogue entry
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, Tian’anmen Square, public, students, Little Red Book, Mao Cult, Cultural Revolution, Mao memories, omnipresece

Jiang Duo: Witness 2 - Chairman Mao Waved Me Forward

Photographic evidence seems to support the idea that during the Cultural Revolution, Mao was quite popular—at least in one sense of the word—as much as he could be seen everywhere: in public at Tian’anmen (ill. 5.48 a&b), as well as in private at home (ill. 5.49), in the cities (ill. 5.50), as well as in the countryside (ill. 5.51, 5.62), in the factories (ill. 5.52) as well as at the universities (ill. 5.53, 5.63).

In all of these depictions, we can see images, photographs, paintings of Mao, the old and the young, or Mao the sun and pattern, hung each in a fitting size, at the most central and prominent places. But these repetitious images are not only representative to the experience of the Cultural Revolution alone.