1977 was the exciting first year after the Gang of Four was crushed. In November, the exhibition office of the China Photographers Association solicited works from my father, Huang Xiang, to participate in the national photography art exhibition . There is a new atmosphere in the new era, so his father showed him a sample of a color photo, and he got a positive answer. This photo is "October Crab".
In October 1976, the collapse of the Gang of Four was a great victory for the party and the people! When we learned the news, our parents were as excited as we were. Several young people in the family were jumping up and down with joy. Our 3-year-old son looked at us blankly and was at a loss. People in Beijing once compared the fate of the Gang of Four to eating three male crabs and one female crab. This important historical event aroused my father's strong desire to create. My father also went to the streets and took many photos of people denouncing the Gang of Four.
In October 1977, my younger brother who worked in Huangshi wrote a letter saying that when he caught crabs on the Yangtze River, he would catch more than a dozen crabs at a time. My father was trying to use the allusion of "three males and one female" crabs to create a work that satirized the Gang of Four. So, my father asked his younger brother to quickly send three male and one female crabs to Beijing. When my brother mailed the crabs, he went through a lot of trouble: at first the post office refused to send them, but later he said it was because he was taking medicine to induce the crabs, so he could successfully send them to Beijing.
The theme established by my father when creating must include two aspects: on the one hand, it expresses the shameful end of the "Gang of Four"; on the other hand, it must express the symbol of "great happiness". This requires the use of appropriate materials, that is, items related to crabs. "Drinking" is an important way for people to express their joy and express their feelings. My father also likes to have a drink, so he used a Moutai bottle and a Luzhou Daqu bottle still at home, plus a brown ceramic plate and two wine glasses, to set off the main subject - crab. . In order to unify the color tone, my father also found a piece of beige plastic paper as the background.
In order to arrange the picture well, my father drew several sketches in advance, arranging the positional relationship between the subject and the foil, the relative position of the four crabs on the plate, the relationship between the wine bottle and the two wine glasses, etc., and designed Several different options were proposed. Then we will arrange the actual objects, take actual photos, and then make modifications after looking at the prototypes. Finally, on the overall layout of and , several crab claws were specially broken off and placed near the lower right corner to symbolize the embarrassing situation of the "Gang of Four". In addition, October is the season when the "Gang of Four" was destroyed, and it is also a festive season for the people. Therefore, my father specially placed a pot of self-growing chrysanthemums outside the shooting stage. Sunlight is used to project the shadow of the chrysanthemum on the blank part of the background, creating an effect of combining virtuality and reality.
At that time, because there were no suitable lamps, we could only use sunlight to shoot. My family lives in the south house. In November, only the north wall of the yard gets sunlight. Beforehand, my father built a temporary shooting platform at the base of the north wall of the yard. Because the sunlight exposure time in Beijing's late autumn is very short, the platform was built about 1 and a half meters high. My father used a Rollei 120 twin-lens reflex camera. When shooting, my father had to stand on another stool to reach the shooting platform. You know, at that time, my father's left leg ankle was fractured and he was still wearing a plaster and crutches. It was not easy to climb up and down! Starting from three o'clock in the afternoon, my father worked up and down for nearly two hours, shooting a continuous film. When I took the last two pictures, the sun had gradually set in the west. At this time, shadows appeared on the right part of the picture, but it didn't matter, and it also added the effect of light and dark contrast. There are some shadows on the crab, making it more three-dimensional. A masterpiece - "October Crab" was born!
At the National Photographic Art Exhibition in 1977, "October Crab" met the audience and received warm praise! This is a good work that uses a small still life subject to express the great changes of an era.
