I am Chairman Mao's Red Guard

Born in the nothern province of Jilin and educated at The Art Institute of Jilin as a painter, Hai Bo is one of a group of contemporary Chinese photographers living and working in Beijing and exploring themes of historical, cultural and social change. Unlike many of his contemporaries such as Song Dong and Zhang Huan, Hai Bao is now strictly a photographer, unusual as many artists work in other media such as painting and performance art in addition to photography.

This work is similiar– but not part of– Hai Bo's series "They", in which he paired photographs taken during the Cultural Revolution with current photographs of the same sitters posed in the same way. Here, a young girl in a Red Guard uniform proudly holding Mao's Little Red Book is paired with a contemporary photograph of the same women in a flowered shift. Already a decade since Hai Bao made the diptych, the contrast between the girl's youthful idealism and the realism of the middle aged woman she has become seems strangely at odds with the transformation of China from the ambition and isolationism of the Cultural Revolution to the market economy and global player it has now become.