Hou Bo

Hou Bo (; 17 September 1924 – 26 November 2017) was a Chinese photographer who, with her husband Xu Xiaobing, was among the best known photographers of Mao Zedong. Born into a poor peasant family, Hou Bo joined the Communist Party at the age of fourteen and learned photography during the Second Sino-Japanese War in order to present a better image of the Party's work to the world. After 1949, she and Xu Xiaobing lived in the same compound as Mao and took both official photos, some used for posters and publicity, which became the most widely circulated photos of Mao, and some family photos, taken informally behind the scenes.

Among her best known photographs are "The Founding of the PRC" (1949), "Mao Zedong Swimming Across the Yangzi" (1955), "Chairman Mao at Work in an Airplane" (1959), and "Mao Zedong with Students from Latin America" (1959), which won First Prize in the National Photography Exhibition of 1959.

Early life Hou Bo was born in September 1924 in Xia County, Shanxi Province, and was from a poor peasant background. She joined the Chinese Communist Party at 14. Her father, a laborer, was beaten to death by factory owner who refused to pay him, and her mother died of grief soon after. When she made her way to Yan'an, she finished school and enrolled in the Anti-Japanese Military and Politics University, where she studied politics. Hou's photo of Mao and other new leaders on 1 October 1949, proclaiming the founding of the People's Republic of China is one of the most widely distributed photographs of modern times, but she also took less formal pictures of the leadership.

After 1949

From 1950 to 1961, Hou Bo lived in the Zhongnanhai, the residence of top party officials, where she set up the Photography Department. She was joined by her husband and two children, who were reared in the Party nursery there. Mao's children called her "Aunt Hou Bo." By one count, although she was the only woman on the film crew, Hou Bo took more than 400 of the 700 officially published photographs of Mao in this period. Her assignment was to make a photographic record not only of Mao, but of Central Committee members including Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Liu Shaoqi. She travelled with these officials and often caught them in unguarded moments, such as "Chairman Mao at Work on an Aeroplane" (1957), which showed him intent on reading a document. These personal photos were not circulated to the public or the press; one print of each was for Zhongnanhai and one for the archive.

Hou Bo had a mixed relation with Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, who pursued photography as an avid amateur and had Hou Bo transferred from Zhongnanhai to New China News Agency in 1961. When she left Zhongnanhai, however, she recalled later, Mao told her "For 12 years, you took a lot of very good pictures of me".

Later years In their later years, she and her husband also received recognition outside China. They were the subjects of a documentary film, Hou Bo et Xu Xiaobing, photographes de Mao (Claude Hudelot et Jean-Michel Vecchiet, 2003, 52 mins), and an exhibition of their photographs of Mao was presented at the Photographers' Gallery, London, during April and May 2004.

After her husband's death in 2009 she noted that she was still a communist and an admirer of Mao Zedong's legacy. She said that she and her husband were "just ordinary workers who gave our lives for the foundation of a new China." Mao made mistakes in the Cultural Revolution, and "everyone's life was hard, but so was his. China was very poor, and he made a big contribution to provide a foundation for our country to be great."

The Taiwan photographer Zhang Zhaotang said when an exhibition of Hou and Xu's photos reached Taiwan, "As an official photographer, Hou has managed to avoid showing rigid and affected postures; she's given her subject a natural and vivid shot, thanks to her diligence and perseverance"