No Old for Ordinary Countrymen: Bertrand Meunier
July 15, 2008
Bertrand Meunier’s “Ordinary Countrymen” showcases a collection of photographic images meant to demonstrate the plight of the modern Chinese peasant, uprooted and lost in the shuffle of industrialization and urbanization. It may seem to the casual bystander, however, that this collection of images does little more than turn up a snooty nez at our Eastern brothers.
Take this image, for example:
© Bertrand Meunier - agence Tendance Floue / Musée Nicéphore Niépce
A Chinese man stands with an umbrella in the snow with a dog at his feet. The landscape is barren—frozen over like the peasant’s memories of a happier time. The peasant’s dress is in good condition—not threadbare. His umbrella is of decent quality. He doesn’t look malnourished.
What we have here is an image of quite a normal man in an umbrella, posed and smiling for the camera. This man’s experience seems no different from out own, and what we gain from this photo in terms of information is paltry at best. We see that the man can walk, that he is living during a cold season, and that he’s not afraid of a camera.
Bertrand Meunier is a social historian, and has tracked the progress of the 800 million Chinese peasants over the course of China’s emerging capitalism. The peasant exodus from the countryside is a motif seen often in our international cultural history. The story of China is not a new story: it is a recycled story of what happens when tired political processes rewrite themselves, not necessarily for the better.
The idea of China being an “old story” brings us back to our nondescript photo above. This average photo of this average man and this average dog on this average street isn’t just a shot of nothing. It isn’t just a throwaway snapshot, or a racist glance looking down on the lower class. It’s a statement of the exhausted Chinese story. It’s a demonstration of the way things have been, the way things will be. This man’s face isn’t visibly worn. His clothes are intact. His umbrella is whole. There is nothing in this photo to be outraged about.
But for the 800 million peasants in China struggling to keep afloat, this normalcy and lack of outrage is what keeps the growing country in limbo. Caught in a purgatory between poverty and sustainable comfort, the Chinese peasant class is what this man in Bertrand Meunier’s photo is: still, posing, and waiting for a flash.
