The Image Makers section examines how a photo influences our view of reality. This week: a Chinese flower arrangement for Putin.
Last week, snowed under because the world’s attention was elsewhere, Vladimir Putin appeared for the first time in a long time at a major international conference in the Chinese capital Beijing. The reason was the third so-called Belt and Road Forum for International Corporation.
The topic of conversation: it Belt and Road Initiative (or BRI, also known as New Silk Road), a global attempt by the Chinese to increase their influence and trade opportunities with huge infrastructure projects. However, the initiative is not going entirely according to plan. “On the anniversary of the New Silk Road, Xi Jinping must adjust his mega plan,” correspondent Leen Vervaeke wrote earlier this week.
About the author
Mark Moorman writes de Volkskrant about series, film, photography and popular culture.
In terms of imaging, nothing was left to chance. Anyone who follows the news agencies’ coverage of this forum could see from many, many photos that the guard of honor at the airport looked shiny and immaculate.
The Western agencies had to make do with an Arctic photographer, who apparently had nowhere to go. All lines of sight were under control. In one of the photos we almost accidentally see how a Chinese official (or a state photographer) adjusts a uniform cap just a little bit straighter.
The airport photos were then followed by an endless series of tightly formatted handshaking between Xi and foreign leaders, as if straight from a photo studio. (‘Take a photo with the Chinese leader!’)
Morbid association
Our eyes fell on the speeches in the main hall of the China National Convention Center. A number of strange portraits of Putin emerged, shot close-up, where he appears to be almost drowning in flowers during his speech. Morbid association: as if rising from a grave covered with flowers. And then his transparent complexity certainly doesn’t help. Perhaps the stage was set for Xi Jinping, who seems a lot less overwhelmed by the decoration, also because he is quite a bit taller than the Russian leader.
Other photos of the conference show that the Chinese did not decorate modestly, it is a true orgy of floral art. Last week it was noted in this section that Pyongyang prefers to work with artificial flowers in the North Korean propaganda image. For what it’s worth: somewhere in the photo collection around the BRI conference we found a lonely man with the smallest model of plant sprayer.
Photos were also taken from a distance in the room – all straight from the front – and it can be seen that only the lectern is lined with flowers. The video image is also shot very close so that we also see the speakers projected large on the back wall, from the same flower wreath.
Flamingo flower
In the meantime, we were curious about the rather eye-catching plants on stage. Without any knowledge of plant species, we used the plant recognition app Picture This do his job. This concerns the anthurium, or tail flower, better known in the Netherlands as the flamingo flower.
As if they were constellations, each flower has a symbolic language attached to it. Perhaps the Chinese designer of the conference hall started there when he wanted to pay floral tribute to the important words that would be spoken on stage. The anthurium represents ‘hospitality, happiness and abundance’.
If he had read a little further, he might have come to the passage where the plant is called poisonous. ‘Keep the anthurium away from the skin and mucous membranes!’ But only if the plants are real.