Those you haven't seen
Images of the Mogao Caves spanning a hundred years
Image comparison over a 120-year time span
More than 150 old photographs of Dunhuang living overseas
A group of people who are racing against time to save Dunhuang's national treasure
After 14 years of creating "Century Dunhuang", it was launched
Those who have passed away can never be seen again
Those that are destroyed, as well as those left behind, are presented to you one by one
In this book you can not only see it up close
The beating of the pulse of life in the Mogao Caves
The inside and outside of the cave have changed over the centuries
Generations of Dunhuang guardians can also be seen
Why and dedication, and fascinated
▲ Image from Century Dunhuang
In the past hundred years, the Mogao Grottoes have experienced vicissitudes, including the erosion of natural wind, frost, rain, snow and sand, as well as the interference and destruction caused by human factors such as war and turmoil, and the lack of historical materials, and people still cannot fully understand the process of the great changes in the cultural treasure house.
▲ The picture shows Stein's image of the Cave in 1908
To this end, Sun Zhijun, an associate researcher at the Dunhuang Research Institute, systematically sorted out for the first time, accurately simulated the photographic angle, scenery and lighting of cultural relics in 1908, and truly reproduced the changes in the Mogao Grottoes in the past hundred years. Let everyone who yearns for Dunhuang not have to go to Britain and the United States to systematically obtain first-hand video materials about the Mogao Grottoes.
▲ The ninth floor of dunhuang Mogao Grottoes photo by Sun Zhijun
It also makes up for the regret of not being able to take photos when visiting the Mogao Grottoes, and under the lens of professional cultural relics photographers, we were able to jump out of the perspective of regular tourists and let the past and present lives of the Mogao Grottoes be intuitively presented in front of our eyes.
▲ Cave 45 - Statue of the Bodhisattva, photo by Sun Zhijun
"Century Dunhuang" collection-grade video album
A copy of "Century Dunhuang"
Open the treasure house of art where the four civilizations meet
Zhang Daqian once said: "If you want to become a painter, you must go to Dunhuang once." ”
Ji Xianlin once said: "There are only four cultural systems in the world with a long history, vast territory, self-contained system, and far-reaching influence: China, India, Greece, islam, and there is no fifth; and there is only one place where these four cultural systems converge, that is, China's Dunhuang and Xinjiang regions, and there is no second." ”
▲ The picture is from "Century Dunhuang", photographed by Sun Zhijun
Yu Qiuyu wrote in "Mogao Grottoes": "When you look at the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes, you don't look at the specimens that have been dead for a thousand years, but at the lives that have lived for a thousand years. ”
Photographs of the Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes taken in different eras are undoubtedly particularly intuitive materials.
▲ Cave 95 - The Arhat of the Bottle Of Enlightenment
▎ Precious historical photos, restore the real sense of Mogao Grottoes.
The book contains more than 150 dunhuang essence images, allowing you to immerse yourself in the Mogao Grottoes.
This is also the first time that the photographs of the Mogao Grottoes in the early 20th century collected overseas have been systematically sorted out and publicly published in China. These precious photos allow us to see the Mogao Grottoes that have never been seen before and are no longer visible.
▲ During the planning stage of this book, Sun Zhijun and the editor prepared some pictures of historical materials
▲ Historical photographs are officially authorized by the British Museum, Harvard University, the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and other image collection units
"Century Dunhuang" combs and reviews the situation of the Mogao Grottoes in detail from 1907 to 1949, refers to a large number of historical documents, objectively examines, and takes us back to the obscure and contradictory history from the perspective of Dunhuang people and cultural protection.
According to the four historical periods, the collected and re-photographed image data are sorted out and compared:
Early grottoes - Sixteen Kingdoms, Northern Dynasty
Heyday grottoes - Sui to Tang Dynasty
Middle Period Grottoes - Middle Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties, Song Dynasty
Late grottoes - Western Xia Solstice Yuan
Through horizontal and vertical comparison, it not only shows the artistic characteristics of grottoes in different periods, but also resonates with the historical echoes of the rise and fall of dynasties and the change of time.
▲ Cave 217 - Sheng Tang Painting Bodhisattva Statue, photo by Sun Zhijun
From this, we can see that in addition to the traditional Buddhist stories on the grotto murals, there are also sutra paintings (painting the scriptures in disguise), flying dances, fragrant flowers for the Buddha, Qionglou Yuyu, and carved beam paintings.
▲ Cave 112 - Guan WuLiang Shou Jing Chang Lower Music dance (rebound pipa), photo by Sun Zhijun
Among them, there are sacred Buddhas, ordinary soldiers, ordinary people, and infinite worldly changes, which have evolved into thousands of years of vitality in the Dunhuang Caves.
▲ Cave 156 - Zhang Yichao Unified Army Travel Map, photo by Sun Zhijun
▎ Compare ancient and modern, intuitively feel the changes in Dunhuang over the past hundred years.
In the process of shooting, those photos at that time used different shooting methods, some rigorous, some delicate, some poetic, some skillful, some retracted freely...
▲ Cave 146 - Cave Top Algae Well
The plate section shows the old photo and the new photo in the same camera position.
On the one hand, it shows the original appearance of the Mogao Grottoes before liberation with great historical value, and on the other hand, it shows the century-long changes of Dunhuang mural paintings.
▲ Cave 46 - Sheng Tang excavated the Nirvana Shrine, 100 years ago vs 100 years later
On the left side of the catalogue are photographs of Dunhuang taken between 1900 and 1940, and on the right are photographs taken by Sun Zhijun and other Dunhuang people, all of which are consistent as much as possible.
▲ Cave 144 - Late Tang Dynasty Painting Thousand Hand Bowl Bodhisattva, 100 Years Ago VS 100 Years Later
This arrangement and presentation in the form of comparison of ancient and modern photos has a very strong sense of time travel and contrast, so that everyone can clearly and intuitively watch this dialogue across the century.
Each illustration is accompanied by concise explanatory text, written by an expert, that tells the story and art in the photo in an easy-to-understand way.
"Century Dunhuang" is like the "flowing" History of the Hundred Years of Change in the Mogao Grottoes of Dunhuang.
Each one is worth a magnifying glass to carefully appreciate, allowing you to see the vicissitudes of the Mogao Grottoes for more than a century in one go.
Save cultural treasures and race against time
Protect the vanished Dunhuang with images
"Century Dunhuang" was created in 14 years by Sun Zhijun, director of the Network Center of Dunhuang Research Institute, associate researcher and director of the Cultural Relics Photography Committee of the China Cultural Relics Society.
The Mogao Caves have a large number of murals and sculptures, and they are hidden in the deep caves. The collection and shooting of the images in the book is a very long work in itself.
He has been engaged in grotto photography at the Dunhuang Research Institute since 1984, and so far, Sun Zhijun and his team have completed high-resolution digital image collection of 258 caves in Mogao Grottoes.
▲ Cave 146 - Cave Top Algae Well, Photo by Sun Zhijun
The birth process of "Century Dunhuang" is even more long and arduous, in 2000, Sun Zhijun participated in the national project "Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes and the Evolution of the Surrounding Environment".
At the same time, it is also committed to collecting influence data related to dunhuang Mogao Grottoes around the world.
▲ Cave 464 - Square story painting drawn in the Yuan Dynasty
In order to obtain first-hand information about the Mogao Grottoes, he traveled to the British Library, the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Harvard University Art Library and other institutions, and examined the photographs and negatives taken by Stein and Warner in Dunhuang and the Mogao Grottoes.
It also collects early images of Dunhuang taken by Stein, Bo Xihe and others in 1908.
▲ Sun Zhijun inspects Stein's original work in the library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
In 2007, Sun Zhijun began his re-photography tour of the Mogao Caves, which accurately simulated the photographic angles, scenes, lighting and other environments of cultural relics from a hundred years ago.
After more than ten years of collection and collation, "Century Dunhuang" was launched this year, giving us the opportunity to see this precious image.
On the cover of the album, the statue of the Bodhisattva in Mogao Cave No. 45 special cave was selected as the main body. This is a representative of Dunhuang sculpture in the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and the statue has a soft face and a dignified look, showing the style of the Tang Dynasty.
▲ Album front
16 large size, feel the visual impact brought by the Mogao Grottoes.
▲ The back of the album
The binding adopts the cloth hardcover and special paper sheath, the inner seal is pressed concave and ironed black, and the touch has a texture.
▲ Inner seal
In terms of body paper selection, the use of 128g super sense special paper, up close to see the retro paper pattern, antique; in the picture selection paper, after many comparative tests, it was decided to use 120g matte paper and four-color printing process to restore the real mural color, good flip wear-
In order to facilitate everyone to visually compare the changes in the Mogao Grottoes in the past hundred years, the binding method of lock line hardcover is adopted, and all the pairing pages can be completely flattened at 180 degrees for easy reading.