My name is Zhu Ruiyun, I am 97 years old this year, and my family lives in Chengguan Town, Yongcheng City, Henan Province. Bored at home, she flipped through the albums at home, looking at photos of herself when she was young, photos of her family, and some photos printed for others, which have been around for more than 50 years. The photos are like a TV series that sees the economic, cultural, historical and social development of this place for half a century... #自拍我的故事 #
In 1938, the Japanese invaded Yongcheng. I was 15 years old at the time and took refuge with my parents in the Catholic Church built by the Spanish missionary Reis. The first time I saw Father Reisson was a foreigner with blue eyes, a long nose, curly hair, and the appearance of being in his 60s. He also opened a hospital in Yongcheng, brought a camera from Spain, and usually took some pictures of the people in the city, or some pictures of the daily activities of the church.
When he took refuge in the Catholic Church, he also met the "object" introduced by his family, Bai Yuxing. At that time, everyone was living in a big courtyard, living together, or helping Father Reis chong do some simple daily work.
One day, the leader of the Japanese army in Yongcheng found Reis Chong, asking him to help the Japanese army to give good people a good certificate. Because of the large number of people taking pictures, Reis Chong was too busy to come, so he found a few educated and spirited young people in the crowd of church refuges as apprentices to help take pictures. Bai Yuxing is the apprentice of Reis Chong.
Bai Yuxing learned photographic techniques in the Catholic Church, and at the same time helped Reis chongzhao to take good people's photos, giving 30 catties of sorghum as a reward every month, and did so for several years.
After the Japanese surrendered, Kashiwa and I also got married. Bai Yuxing left the Catholic Church, and he opened a photo studio by himself, called Xingyun Photo Studio, and zhu Ruiyun and Bai Yuxing's last word was combined to form a name. It was on the banks of the city river in the old city of Yongcheng.
Bai Yuxing borrowed a lot of money from relatives and friends, went to Shangqiu to buy an old photo machine, an eight-inch lens, and when he bought his home, there was no material, no paper, no negatives, and no potion. He also borrowed 100 yuan of the current ocean in Jiang Shixiang, who worked at the Kuomintang tax office, and 10 yuan of usurious loans for a month, and bought all the materials for photography.
When I first started learning to take pictures, I used glass negatives. The glass negative is 6 inches and coated with a potion, and if the glass negative sees water, the image on the negative is easy to fall off. If a customer asks for a negative, cut it open with a glass knife. The glass negative rushed out without the current film image soft, black and white, no transition in the middle, feeling that the image is very stiff.
At that time, the photo studio was still open-air, and a black cloth was set up in the courtyard, using a piece of black cloth and a few bamboo poles to pick it up. When taking photos, if you need side light, backlight and smooth light, you can use your hands to dial the light in which direction. At that time, there was no electricity, no flash, and I could only come up with such a method. If you encounter a cloudy day, you can't take pictures, and you can't take pictures at night, so you can only choose to open on sunny days.
After a year or two, the Xingyun Photo Studio moved to a new place, the area was much larger than before, it was a five-room house, a family of people, at that time called "Dang" not called "Money", "Dang" Gold was 100 yuan. At that time, the tiles on the house were lifted, a lot of glass was put on, and the light was directly shot through the glass to the room, which was the method that was thought out when there was no electricity. In the room hung a lot of wire, put a white cloth, which side of the dark to open the white cloth, which side of the bright white cloth down, with this method to adjust the light, this way for several years.
In 1946, the Kuomintang "New Fifth Army" came to a regiment. One of the regimental commander's relatives was also a master of photography, and the technique was very good, and I learned the technique of repairing negatives with him. Repairing the photo is a careful job, it is repaired with a pencil, the pencil tip has a sharp blade, fine, the negative is bright, the rinse is black, and the pencil is filled with a stroke; the thin part of the negative is painted red with color, and the lining is the same as this, which I studied myself.
The Kuomintang "New Fifth Army" collected three private photo studios in Yongcheng County, and gave each family dozens of yuan in January, which was enough to eat. The Kuomintang did not live for two years, nor did it call a license, that is, in this township, married, children took a picture.
After liberation, the photo studios of the three joint ventures were separated, and each did their own thing. By the end of 1955, all walks of life in the country were cooperative. Land has been cultivated cooperatively, business has been jointly operated, and photo studios have also been jointly operated. Three private photo studios in Yongcheng County are combined into one, and the name is the state-run photo studio.
Before the 1960s, yongcheng county town was not electrified, and it was illuminated with gasoline lamps at night. It's not dark to light the lights, a fiddle is the middle of the night, everyone wash the photos of the wash photos, cut the cut, but also to the negatives, one by one is particularly difficult to right. The photo and the photo are put together, and the negative and the negative are installed together, which is very troublesome. At that time, there were also many rural photographs. Ordinary people entering the city must have a certificate, and a one-inch photo of themselves is affixed to the certificate.
Once Bai Yuxing went to the countryside to take photos, in order to send the negatives to the photo studio in the city in time to be rinsed, he entrusted the compatriots in the city to carry the finished negatives to the city to wash and wash. The negatives are wrapped in black cloth and placed on the rack. Bai Yuxing told his fellow villagers to be careful on the road, the negatives are glass and easy to break. On the way to the city there is a drainage ditch, the shelf car bumped a little when crossing the ditch, the fellow stopped the car and thought don't rot, open the cloth to see it, a good look, not rotten, when you get to the city photo studio, all the negatives are exposed.
At that time, there were no color photos, just black and white photos. Coloring a photo also takes a lot of effort. What clothes the person in the photo is wearing, I think about what color to match and look good.
My photographic works have won awards in Zhengzhou and Shangqiu, and the prizes have been awarded for face and sheets. I have never done enough in my life to take photography, and the greatest joy is photography, because I have loved it all my life!
At that time, the state-run photo studio was the most glamorous unit in the county, and the "photo" in the photo studio was also the most decent. Wherever you go to take pictures, they are respected by people. With the development of society, Western photo studio photography spread to the land of China through the Guangzhou port, and after the rain, bamboo shoots developed to various townships, the original state-run photo studio technology, equipment, aesthetic concept of backwardness, business deterioration, state-run photo studio slowly became people's collective memory.
The years are traceless, but the photograph can seize the moment of the passing time and leave a permanent memory. This is a story about a rural photo studio. Of course, its stories are much more than that, those stories are also hidden in the pictures of different families scattered in the countryside, and the stories and memories of the family tell people about the changes in the countryside through the photos in the picture frames at home...
Zhu Ruiyun died last month due to illness, and this graphic story is edited according to her oral account during her lifetime, as a tribute to the folk video artist who preserved rural memories and the yellowing art that shaped our nostalgia.