Sha Fei

Reputation and legacy

Scholar Shana Brown wrote that Sha Fei's "images of soldiers crouching on rooftops, peasant armies marching through plumes of dust, and laughing young enlistees, convey an intensity that was the result of close framing devices that plunge the viewer directly into the action". Brown saw in Sha Fei's work both the "kinetic energy" of Cartier-Bresson's street photography and the "rawness" of Robert Capa's combat work, qualities that enable viewers today to "practically smell gunpowder and feel the grit of the battlefield under our feet". Brown also wrote that "although Sha Fei's images eschew the rigidity of much contemporary Communist imagery—a surprising feat given the preponderance of Soviet influence on Chinese visual art from the 1930s onwards—they are still almost always political in nature. Narrating specific instances of military and government action while foregrounding Communist social ideals, they exude optimism and fortitude. Children laugh and smile, young soldiers keep their backs straight under fire, and even Japanese POWs break into song, grateful for the mercy of their Communist captors. The artistry required to make such tableaux appear spontaneous and natural marked Sha Fei as a photographer and propagandist of extraordinary talent."

Sha Fei was careful to preserve and catalog his negatives. He kept those of Lu Xun on himself, which were accidentally buried with him.

Exhibitions of his work in the United States have been held at the Ohio State University (2009), and at the Fairbank Center, Harvard University (March–April 2016). In April 2016, the Fairbank Center held a conference, "The Photographer Who Shaped Modern China: Sha Fei and His World."

Sha Fei's student Gu Di (顾棣), who followed him for seven years, also became a celebrated photographer and won the Lifetime Achievement Award of the China Photographers Association in 2002. Gu credits Sha Fei as the greatest influence in his life.

Selected works