The Look of Love

by Martin Fry

When I'm looking for birthday presents for my parents, I might tour the shops and rack my brains for a few days. Last month, photographer Jiao Bo gave his mother a gift he had been working on for twenty years.

Jiao's An Die An Niang (My Mother, My Father) photo exhibition opened at the China Art Gallery on his mother's 86th birthday.

"have trained my lens on my parents since 1978," said Jiao, "recording their daily lives, their joys and sorrows, and the local customs that have shaped them."

Qiao Huagui and her husband Jiao Wenchong made only their second trip to Beijing to attend. Qiao was struck down by pulmonary emphysema just a few days before, but she ignored her doctor and got up from her sickbed to make the long journey from their little village of Tianjinwan in Shandong Province. On the day of the opening ceremony, Jiao carried his mother to the gallery on his back.

"My parents thought this was a big event in the life of their son," said Jiao on the last day of his show. "My father has a bad leg, but he said he would come even if he had to crawl all the way to Beijing."

Jiao cried when his parents cut the ribbon at the opening ceremony.

Jiao's exhibition also coincided with the publication of a book devoted to his parents. Originally, he said, he took the photographs with no intention other than to create a family album. But at Spring Festival this year his mother fell seriously ill and almost died. It was then that Jiao decided he wanted to write a book and hold an exhibition of his pictures to show his parents before it was too late.

Many visitors to the show said they were touched both by the relationship recorded in the photos, and by the evident depth of Jiao's feelings for his mother and father.

"It's very moving, vivid, and real," said Li Zhongling, a retired lady from Jiangxi. "I'm from the countryside, and although they are from Shandong, these pictures remind me of my life as well."

Wu Hao, a young man from Beijing, was fascinated by the insight into a life far removed from anything he had known.

"I'm from the city, and I knew nothing about the traditions shown in these pictures," said Wu. "This is a very valuable record, because in the countryside there will be less and less of them in the future."

Jiao Wenchong was only 16 years old when he married Qiao Huagui. The marriage was contracted in traditional fashion - proposed by a go-between and approved by the parents. Jiao saw his wife for the first time when he raised her red veil on their wedding day 68 years ago. Like many women at the time, her feet had been crippled by binding when she was a child.

Jiao Bo says he has never seen his parents quarrel, although their early life together was far from easy. They didn't speak to each for three years at the beginning of their marriage. His father says it was because he was too young to know what marriage was all about. His mother says she didn't want to speak to him because he always scolded other people.

Things improved after the birth of their first child, and they squabbled less and less as they got older. Now their neighbors joke to them: "You two are like hedgehogs who live together but never prick each other."

Jiao's parents were his first subjects when he took up photography in 1978.

"The first picture I took was with a Nikon camera that belonged to my father-in-law, who had picked it up on a battlefield during the war against the Japanese. But it didn't work well because it was so old, so then I borrowed a Seagull camera and managed my first successful picture.

"I taught myself about photography from magazines and books. At first, my parents didn't understand. They had never taken pictures, and they hid when I tried to photograph them. They thought only beauties and film stars had photos taken, not people like them who were not 'good looking'

Their attitude began to change after Jiao had his first pictures published in newspapers. In time, his parents got used to his activities and relaxed in front of the camera.

In a recent article, Jiao wrote: "The more photos I take of my parents, the closer I feel to them. As a reporter I have to travel to different places all year round. To find out where I am, my father has taken to reading the newspapers. He is always the first to grab the papers when they arrive in the village. If he sees a picture by me, he describes it to my mother at home. They say seeing my pictures is like seeing me."

After the opening ceremony, Jiao said: "My parents have never been to this kind of big event before, but they didn't look nervous at all. They didn't say much. But I could see they felt they had fulfilled a very important mission for me."

His mother had at least one comment, however. "I thought this should be a much larger meeting," she said. "This is a piece of cake for me."