My Mum and Dad: Family Memories and Rural Days of A Generation in China (collector's edition for
By Jiao Bo, China CITIC Press, February 2016
1999: His father checks his mother’s fever after she falls seriously ill.
1994: Jiao’s parents work hard to take care of the family.
From the 1970s to the 1990s, photographer Jiao Bo took more than 12,000 pictures of his parents, framing their lifestyle, along with over 600 hours of videos. He wrote hundreds of thousands of Chinese characters, recording their daily life and emotions as well as local life and changes throughout the decades.
This book is a collection of 100 of the best photos from his project, which together recount the story of a typical farmer’s family, its members’ passions, and folk customs in rural China.
“We were born at almost the same time,” sighs Yu Minhong, a well-known Chinese educator. “From these pictures we see our own parents rushing about, raising us and taking care of the family. His photos take us back to our rural childhood, when we grew up with the tender love of our parents. More or less, his photos immortalize our nostalgia, documentation which can hardly be found elsewhere.”
“The feelings are far beyond the lens in this story of a son and his parents across three decades,” comments Gao Feng, an eminent Chinese film director. “It’s a perfect record of a Chinese family ecosystem, depicting the ties of the Chinese people that have been carried on for generations.”
“Jiao Bo presented a typical picture of cultural images through his parents, capturing vivid details related to Chinese ethics, Eastern family affection, and descendants of the Chinese nation,” asserts Yu Qiuyu, a noted Chinese writer.
Born in Zibo City, Shandong Province, Jiao Bo is a renowned Chinese photographer and film director. In August 1998, he won the Mankind Award, the top honor at the First International Humanity Photo Awards (HPA) for his series, My Mum and Dad. In 2010, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hong Kong Photographic Exhibition. Over the last few years, he has won nearly 100 prizes at all levels, nationally and internationally. In 2014, he was awarded some 200 domestic and international honors for his documentary, Village Diary, including a China Movie Award and a Magnolia Award of the Shanghai TV Festival.