Chairman Mao is the Red Sun in Our Hearts, 1967 [Uncensored], A rare uncensored version of the 1967 visual celebration of Mao Zedong. Hardback with pictorial paper boards, 265 x 232mm, 70pp., black and white and colour photographs, Chinese Revolutionary Photography Association (ed.), Chinese language.

" In photographs made of Mao at this time, he is often accompanied by his second-in-command and designated successor, Lin Bao. Lin was a hihgly significant figure, but he appears only as a ghost in many of the existing copies of this book, having been painstakingly obliterated in copy after copy...Lin's fall from grace came in 1971, following an alleged attempted coup against Mao. Lin was killed in a plane crash later that year as he reportedly tried to flee China when Mao discovered his duplicity. The fact that this book had originally been published four years prior to this event points to the probability that these excisions were made by individuals who owned the book, well after its publication and distribution. During the Cultural Revolution, possession of photographs or literature depicting leaders who had fallen out of favor could be held against the owners as proof of 'rightist' or improper beliefs. -- Martin Parr & WassinkLundgren, The Chinese Photobook: From the 1900s to the Present, Aperture, 2015, pp. 218-221.

Provenance: A private London collection