FROM ONE CHINA TO THE OTHER

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between photography and its geopolitical context in the era of post‐war decolonization through an examination of Henri Cartier‐Bresson's book of 1954, From One China to the Other, his extended photoreportage on the fall of Nationalist China and the beginnings of the People's Republic in 1948–49. From One China to the Other occupies a significant place in three contexts: first, in the history of photojournalism, where it constitutes a significant assertion of the photographer's political independence from the external editorial agendas of the illustrated press; second, in the careers of both Cartier‐Bresson and Sartre Cartier‐Bresson, Henri and Sartre, Jean‐Paul. 1954. D'une Chine à l'autre, Paris: Delpire. [Google Scholar], where it represents for the photographer a qualification of the aesthetic of the “decisive moment” and for the philosopher a move towards an interest in the demography and the politics of an emerging postcolonial world; and third, in the relations between photography and humanism, where the central question posed by the book is whether so‐called humanist photography is an instrument of (neo‐)colonialist Western ideology or a means of demystifying such ideology. This article examines each of these dimensions in turn, concluding that Cartier‐Bresson's book engages with photography's capacity to perpetuate ahistorical ethnic stereotypes by insisting on a strong counter‐contextualization of the image.

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