【时代周刊 20140115】电视人民共和国：中国80年代的照片

满仓

【中文标题】电视人民共和国：中国80年代的照片
【原文标题】The People’s Republic Of Television: Portraits From 1980s China
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Erik Kessels
【原文链接】http://lightbox.time.com/2014/01/15/the-peoples-republic-of-television-portraits-from-1960s-china/#1


二十世纪八十年代，电视机大规模进入中国。作为人民共和国经济飞速发展的象征之一，电视机首次进入寻常百姓家庭。就像电视机在50年代和60年代首次出现在西方国家一样，那些幸运地买到一台电视机的人，把他们的小盒子当作身份的象征。

但是除了虚荣，电视机连通了世界。突然之间，一个机器能把广袤世界中的居民联系在一起，其效率超过任何一种科技，直到互联网的出现……突然之间，国家有更好的机会做宣传了。

尽管它在某种程度上被政治利用，但是人们可以想想电视机给第一次拥有它的人带来的那种喜悦和好奇，或许就像年轻人拿到第一台iPhones时的心情。

很快，中国出现了很多人们和电视机的合影，每张照片里，电视机和它的主人就像一对情侣。

看着这些照片，我们想到了当下流行的体验：YouTube里一些开箱评测的视频。我们看到人们展示那些新鲜出炉的科技产品。（当然，现在这些科技玩意不大可能包括阴极射线之类的东西。）

在记录电视机在中国的诸多照片中，下面这8张是我见过的最有代表性的。我在北京的一个市场中找到这些照片，这是一个60多岁的女人，永远是相同的姿势。实际上，唯一改变的是她的外衣，或者说是上衣——不同颜色的马甲。裤子看起来都是一样的。甚至她的小拇指，在每一张照片中都奇怪地翘起。

















不知怎么的，她的小拇指让我极为着迷，我总感觉她是故意让手指摆出这种不自然的造型。

她的手指在遮挡什么东西吗？这是一种恶作剧吗？这是否和她对电视机的自豪感有关？

这一系列神奇的小照片很可能是这个女人的丈夫在不长的一段时间里拍摄的，一对夫妇记录家里的新成员——电视机，就像是一场行为艺术。




原文：

In the 1980s, television reached China in a big way. Part of the rapid economic expansion of the People’s Republic, TV was available to the masses for the very first time. And much like the first appearance of TV in the West in the ’50s and ’60s, those lucky enough to own a television proudly displayed their boxes as status symbols.

But beyond vanity, the TV brought contact. Suddenly, a single type of device brought citizens of this vast continent together more immediately and more efficiently than any technology until the arrival of the Internet . . . and simultaneously provided the state with more opportunities for propaganda than ever before.

Still, whatever its political re-purposing, one can imagine the joy and curiosity TVs brought their first owners, probably comparable to the reactions of younger generations to owning their first iPhones.

Soon, photographs of people and their televisions began appearing around China. Each showed a TV and its owner, posing together as if beloved spouses.

Looking at these images, we’re reminded of another contemporary trend: YouTube unboxing videos. Here, too, we see people displaying their freshly minted tech innovations (though these days, those tech goodies are unlikely to include a cathode ray).

From the many pictures documenting TVs in China, the eight photographs here are the best I’ve seen. Found in a market in Beijing, they show a woman in her late sixties, always in an identical pose. In fact, the only thing that changes is her outfit. Or rather, the only thing that changes is her top: a new colorful jumper in each image. Her trousers are, it seems, always the same. Even her pinkie finger remains static and strangely angled in shot after shot.

For some reason, this precise pinkie fascinates, implying as it does that she consciously arranged her little finger in a slightly unnatural way.

What’s with the pinkie? Was this a strange running gag? Is this artifice something to do with showing how proud she is of her TV?

What’s for sure is that in this extraordinary small photographic series, most likely made by a husband and his wife over a short period of time, a couple documents the arrival of a new television set in a way that verges on conceptual art.

Pentium_5

Even her pinkie finger remains static and strangely angled in shot after shot.

-- This is merely sort of behavioral elegance of Chinese females, just like the French females do when kissing the oyster meat with it wrapped in a small piece of handkerchief in hand as portrayed in Maupassant's short novel.

Pentium_5

真不知鬼佬是出于少见多怪还是矫情。

体会着狂野

一场行为艺术。

xingxinzhuang

怎么个情况？
这是.

yiran

我倒是被她这些基本上同系列的线衣拿住了！

cbb0304

就是一个织毛衣买的广告

狄道人

当年的小“土豪”

生于1973

鬼佬生怕这个小指如中指般的指向西方。心里暗怕。哈哈。。。