Xu Xiaobing

Xu Xiaobing, Hou Bo, and Mao Zedong 1949Xu Xiaobing 徐肖冰 (16 August 1916 – 27 October 2009) was a Chinese cinematographer, filmmaker, and photojournalist. The Chinese Communist Party commissioned Xu and his wife, Hou Bo, to make an official photographic record to share with the Chinese and world public of Party leaders, scenes of battle, and vignettes of everyday life during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and especially of Mao Zedong from the 1930s down to the 1960s. The couple shot many of the best-known photos of Mao and other leaders.

Xu was a member of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and President of the Chinese Photographers' Association.

Early life Xu Xiaobing was born in 1916 in Tongxiang county, Zhejiang, to a family that had declined socially and economically. He was first schooled at home, then, at his grandfather's insistence, sent to a local traditional school, where he studied the Confucian classics.

Wartime photography at Yan'an Xu, along with other left-wing photographers, such as Cai Shangxiong made his way to the Communist controlled areas outside Xi'an. He joined the communist Eighth Route Army and was assigned to its Yan'an Film Studio (延安电影制片厂). He and Wu Yinxian were cinematographers for Yuan Muzhi's Fighting Combine: Nanni Bay, as well as battlefield documentaries of his own. Party leaders as the war with Japan continued became even more eager to establish film studios to make their case both to the Chinese public and world opinion, and Xu was quickly given resources and responsibilities. In the summer of 1938 Xu made his first photo of Mao, taken while the rising leader was addressing a training session on military tactics.

The critic-historian Claire Roberts observes that this 1938 photograph of Mao making a speech at Yan'an "presaged his leadership of the country". She analyzes the message of the photograph by saying that Mao "stands in profile to the right of the frame, his hands placed confidently on his hips, towering over a crowd of soldiers". This pose, she continues, was an "unusual side-on view," in contrast to the traditional way of depicting leaders in a "frontal view in order to emphasize their integrity and authority." But Xu explained his choice in a practical way, saying "If I had stood in front, I would have had to stand in the middle of the crowd", so "all I could do was move over to the side and take the shot".

Xu travelled with the army in Northwest China during campaigns against the Japanese in 1939–1940, where he took candid, on-the-spot photos of battle scenes and everyday life behind the lines.

Xu's assignments from 1943 to 1949 produced widely distributed images. Among them was the arrival in Yan'an of United States Special Envoy Patrick Hurley; the negotiations in Chongqing between the Nationalists and the Communists; the North China campaigns of the Eighth Route Army after 1946; and the arrival of Mao and the People's Liberation Army in Beiping in 1949.

During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) the couple was criticized. Jiang Qing, Mao's wife and leader of the radical left wing, charged that Hou "never produced any good pictures of Mao", and Hou spent several years in prison. The leftists did not approve of Xu's photos of Mao's family life and did not allow them to be published. The French film-maker Claude Hudelot made a documentary devoted to their lives, They travelled to Europe, where they were honored with exhibitions of their work in London and Paris.

Xu Xiaobing died at the age of 93 on October 27, 2009, in the Beijing Military Region General Hospital.