Sha Fei

Sha Fei was a Chinese photojournalist and war photographer best known for his work with the Chinese Communist Party during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–45). Born Situ Chuan (司徒传), he took the pseudonym Sha Fei (flying sand), that is, a grain of sand in the sky of his country. ² He has been called "one of the most admired Leftist photographers in China during the wartime years of 1937–1949", and "one of the most influential photographers of his generation". His "warm, dramatic, and ideologically-charged photographic presentations were emulated for decades thereafter". Situ Chuan (Sha Fei) was born in 1912 in Guangzhou (Canton), Guangdong Province. His father, Situ Junxun (司徒俊勋), was a small business owner. Sha Fei felt he needed to learn a trade to support his family when his father's business went under in 1926, and studied at a radio school. In July 1926 he enlisted in the National Revolutionary Army and joined the Northern Expedition as a telegraph operator. He worked at a radio station in Shantou from 1932 to 1936, and became interested in photography, preferring a style more realistic than the international style he saw in magazines. In June 1935, he joined the Shanghai-based Black and White Photographic Society (黑白摄影社). ² In 1936, he decided to become a professional photographer and quit his job in Shantou. He went to Shanghai, and in the fall entered the Department of Western Painting of the Shanghai Fine Arts Academy. ² He became well known for his photographs of blind beggars, poverty stricken children, and emaciated peasants. Shanghai was the base of most modern Chinese artists at the time, and he had the opportunities to meet famous people in the cultural circles such as Lu Xun. On 8 October 1936, he took the most famous photograph of Lu Xun's late life at the Second National Woodcut Exhibition. When Lu died 11 days later, he took some of Lu's last photos. These photos, as well as ones taken during Lu's funeral, were widely published in many magazines, including Liangyou (The Young Companion) and Shidai, establishing his reputation as a photojournalist. Sha Fei's photo was later the template for the cover art on Lu Xun's collected works. ²³ In 1937, Sha Fei joined the Eighth Route Army led by the Communist Party of China and became the first full-time photographer of the army. He documented the war against the Japanese invaders and the life of the soldiers and civilians in the Jin-Cha-Ji border region. He also trained many young photographers and established the first photography department of the army. He was praised by Mao Zedong as "a great artist of the people". ² His photographs 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. He also showed a deep interest in the universality of human emotion, regardless of allegiance. His photos are therefore, despite their propagandistic use, not only an illustration of history, but also a mechanism of how history is captured and staged with the photographer's sensibility during extreme circumstances through the lens of a camera. ⁴ After contracting tuberculosis, Sha Fei was sent to Shijiazhuang in May 1948 to be treated at the Norman Bethune Hospital. He was also suffering from mental illness after years of highly stressful work in the war zone. On December 15, 1949, he shot to death a Japanese doctor involved in his treatment. He was sentenced to death by a military court in China and executed on March 4, 1950. A retrial in 1986 acquitted Sha posthumously, saying he was in mental distress as he was reminded of the cruelty of war scenes when seeing the Japanese doctor, and he thought the doctor had attempted to poison him. ²³ He was buried at the Hebei Hero and Martyr Memorial Park in Shijiazhuang. Sha Fei's photographic legacy was largely forgotten until the 1980s, when his daughter Wang Yan donated his negatives and prints to the Harvard Yenching Library and the China Art Gallery. His works have since been exhibited and studied by scholars and critics, who have recognized his contribution to 20th-century Chinese photography and visual culture. ⁴