Negotiating private and public relational boundaries of the Chinese female body through the lens of past and present

The social transformation of the reform era saw healthy economic development alongside the rise of consumerism and increased levels of corruption and unemployment. The effects of this rapid transformation greatly influenced the growing new generation who were readily exposed to the commodity economy and consumerist ideology. The contemporary private photography ( Si Sheying ) movement in China is said to have risen under such circumstances, pioneered and further developed by post-1980s and post-1990s individuals who grew up in urban cities with a knack for information technology. Driven by individualism, consumerism and technological modernization, these photographers have created some of the most controversial and sexualized photographs of their era. Yet, little research has been done to suggest a plausible historical provenance contributing to the rise and development of Chinese contemporary private photography, particularly in their depiction of the Chinese female body. This article seeks to draw from Republican-era (1928–36) photographers who have contributed to Shanghai pictorial magazines such as Liangyou, Shanghai Manhua, Shidai Manhua and Ling Long and have explored the different representations of the Chinese female imagery. It will further suggest how historical art movements like surrealism underpinned the ways in which the Chinese female body was discussed and displayed in printed media with considerations of the changing eroticization of the male gaze caught in a different mass consumption era. This article will then reveal the formation of the tripartite symbolism drawn from naturism, surreal humour and Rabindranath Tagore’s humane east that is inherent in the above analysis to suggest a surrealistic yet anarchistic transformation in contemporary private photography in China. Finally, it will draw this article to a close with the favourable conditions of the private–public, inner–outer ( Nei-Wai ) boundary, allowing the Republican-era Chinese females to be empowered to move between the two spheres and where Chinese contemporary private photographers continually use to break down binary divides that continue to hinder in today’s conditions.