The Sentimental Journey of Soviet Photographer Nikolay Drachinsky to 1950s China
In 1958, the young and optimistic Soviet photographer Nikolay Drachinsky was commissioned by the illustrated magazine Ogonyok to produce a story about the new Democratic China.
To complete this assignment, Drachinsky visited the country several times between 1958 and 1959. His articles and photographs were published in five issues of Ogonyok magazine, and his book Chinese Travel was later published in Russian, German and Chinese.
Seventy years later, it is interesting to observe the visual archive of that journey. Starting from stereotypes, Drachinsky's images became increasingly intimate and poetically sentimental. He visited Shanghai and Beijing, as well as the central and southern regions. The Soviet journalist was able to visit families, student camps, city parks and small villages, and view world-famous monuments and beautiful, lesser-known landscapes.
This series tells the story of a representative of a very modern Soviet civilisation slowly becoming immersed in traditional Chinese life. The images also reflect contemporary changes in China in the late 1950s.
