An old-fashioned camera, two or three apprentices, and a photo master ride bicycles through all corners of the Chinese countryside, recording the lives of ordinary people in the countryside, which is a true portrayal of the image of Chinese countryside in the second half of the 20th century.
For a long time after 1965, there was only one state-run photo studio in a county, and even the visual presentation of the county's cultural, economic, historical, and social development was the only one, and there was no other branch.
Since 2011, I have visited the four provinces of Luyu, Suwan and Anhui to trace the footprints of Chinese rural images through interviews and other forms.
Using social survey and comparative research methods, the establishment and development of many photo studios in 23 counties and cities in the hinterland of the Central Plains were sorted out, as well as the changes in the operation system, the evolution of photographic service methods, and the flow of process technology and equipment and tools.
Let everyone remember this group of people with the camera to record this history, and restore what the rural society was like, what life was like, what the development of the countryside was like, and what the development of the countryside was like. Touch the old days and learn about the social changes of different eras.
Nowadays, those photographers who carry old-fashioned cameras and run from village to village are rare, and with their departure, the people have gradually forgotten these familiar figures. However, no matter how the times develop, warm and distant pictures have become our warm collective memories, without their wandering, there would be no such memories of the times worth remembering.
Looking back at the twilight, it always brings us an indelible warmth.
These rural photo studios disappeared and declined, and the rural photo masters disappeared and fell silent, gradually fading out of people's vision, while the memories were preserved along with the photos taken by the masters.
We can see the traces of an era in those yellowed photos, and more people have found endless nostalgia in them, and it is these old photos that constitute the "cultural background" of rural images.
It is the photo studio that shapes nostalgia, and then preserves nostalgia, making nostalgia an emotional memory of modern China.
It presents a spectacular scene of folk image culture in central China in the second half of the 20th century.