Shanghai, 1949-1959.

Shanghai: Shanghai renmin meishu chubanshe,, [c.1959]. The preferred deluxe issue First edition, first printing, of this photobook issued by the Shanghai Municipal Government to celebrate ten years of Communist rule, as well as Chinese culture, history, and art. Shanghai's status as the country's economic powerhouse is stressed through numerous pictures of heavy and light industries, smiling workers, and modern housing developments, as well as of consumer goods such as fountain pens, sewing machines, and bicycles. Space is given to healthcare, culture and the arts, the historic architecture of the Bund, parades, and tourism. Unlike other propaganda from the period, the message is uniformly forward-looking, centring on developments achieved under socialism rather than recycling shop-worn condemnations of the Republican and imperial eras. Copies of this extravagant production were also issued housed in a paper box. Folio. With 21 tipped-in plates (16 colour, 2 folding), colour and black and white illustrations throughout. Title page printed in brown and grey. Binding designed by Ren Yi, Chen Zhichu, Zhang Suyu, Cai Zhenhua, and Qian Zhenzhi. Original red cloth, spine elaborately decorated in gilt, gilt calligraphic title on front cover, foot of front board blocked in blind, floral-patterned endpapers. Housed in publisher's folding grey cloth case, title to front panel in gilt, bone ties. Spine bright, boards lightly soiled, extremities worn spine ends and tips, a little finger soiling internally, else bright. A very good copy indeed in very good case with some soiling, lining foxed. Parr & WassinkLundgren, The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present, pp. 189-92.