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Mr. Qi Guanshan was one of the highly influential photographers of our country in the mid-20th century. His career as a photographer carried him through the battles of the Anti-Japanese War and the War of Liberation. In the early 1950s shortly after the founding of the People's Republic of China, he joined the Press Bureau of the State Information Administration, and he became the first full time professional photographer for the Party and State leaders such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. Hence, the name of Qi Guanshan got known through the diffusion of reports of the functions attended by Party and state leaders, as well as with reports associated with the major events of the country.
The collection consists of five parts: seasoned through the fires and fighting of wars; capturing the charisma of great leaders; truthfully recording the actual events in the initial period of the People's Republic of China; re-trekking the Long March route; and the appendices. The collection spans the anti-Japanese War, the War of Liberation and the early period of the People's Republic of China, exhibiting in a concentrated manner the historic photos he had taken when covering, at the risk of his own life, the wars fought by the Chinese people under the leadership of the Chinese communists to defeat the Japanese imperialists and the Kuomintang reactionaries. The collection also illustrates the jubilant celebrations held throughout the country upon the establishment of New China and the Chinese people's march towards prosperity.