Using film negatives to challenge censorship

Xu began thinking about a new series shortly after publishing Negatives. He says the narrative nature of traditional photography and the conceptual nature of contemporary photography are like two intersecting circles. When the circles overlap, they show the artist’s different modes of thinking and values.

Because factors like time and the political environment in China are changing how we view the Tiananmen Square protests, using inverse colours and digital tools on our computers and phones could be a way to break through those barriers.

Xu recommends viewers to look at the Negatives/Scan series from their computer, and use their mobile phone as a decoder to invert the photo negatives to a standard colour scheme. If you use an iPhone, head over to Settings, choose “general” then “accessibility” and select “display accommodations”. Under “Invert colours”, tap the “classic invert” slider, then select the camera function to view the photos.

The image proportions and picture order of Negatives/Scan say much about Xu Yong’s feelings towards Tiananmen Square and the narrative nature of his work. The series is an attempt to weaken his subjective viewpoint and highlight the conceptual nature of the pictures. Old images seem new, and help to expose the government’s attempt to cover-up the event and erase history.

“The fact that these negatives physically exist can’t be obscured or altered, and their value has only proved more significant over time,” says Xu.

Photos of the protests were seen everywhere in 1989, but they rarely saw the light of day in China. Even publishing words related to the Tiananmen Square protests could lead to criminal liability. In publishing these taboo images, Xu doesn’t directly address the content of the images, but deliberates on how to deliver the immutable qualities of these images.

The bloody conflict of the Tiananmen Square massacre does not appear in Negatives, and only the final image of a tank clearing up the square on the last page—ominously marked as “page 64”— portends the end of the student movement. In Negatives/Scan, the penultimate image also points to a menacing end for the protesters, with a group of soldiers pointing guns at two unarmed men with a bicycle. Xu doesn’t hide any implicit messages in these photos.