Panel: Editing and Generating the Self, Selves, and Voices
Copanelists: Patricia Casey and Christina Houen
After realizing that a personal connection existed between Minnie Vautrin and my family— Vautrin having attended and actually taken over officiating my parents’ wedding in 1937—I decided to pursue deeper research into Vautrin’s life and work. My original research led me to collect photographs taken before and during the war, and eyewitness accounts of Vautrin’s time in Nanking. Through the identification of the individuals, and editing of accounts from the descendents of eyewitnesses, a deeper, more vivid story was created. My purpose became to create a narrative for the individuals captured in the photographs.
The story these photos tell stands as a testament to the work of Vautrin, who would become known as a living Buddha to those inside the refugee camp on Ginling campus. It reveals the world Vautrin created inside the walls of her school, protecting her girls from the Japanese occupation raging outside. These voices have also given life and personality to Vautrin preceding the war, showing the dynamics of an educator, in loco parentis to her students, and an active social worker building the community around Ginling.
Without editing, although these images would still endure, the fullness of Vautrin’s and her staff’s, especially the Chinese’s personal struggle and contribution in its historical context, would be lost.
Sun Jianqui retired in 2001 as Professor of English at the University of International Business and Economics, where she taught Literatures in English, and British and American Drama. Born in 1939 to a film educator/ filmmaker’s family, she developed an interest in photo biography after her father’s films and photos gradually surfaced in the 1980s and 1990s, and since the Ist International IABA Conference in Beijing. Among other works, she has edited and translated Sun Mingjing’s Filming as War Clouds Loom in 1937—6000km with a Cinecamera (Foreign Language Press, 2006); An Anthology of Contemporary American Short Plays (bilingual) Vol. I (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2005); Nursery Rhymes from My Land to Your Land (bilingual & bicultural) (China Juvenile & Children Publishing House, 2002); Photography, by the New York Institute of Photography (China Photography Press, 1986); The Paradox of Documentary/Educational Filmmaker (Asian Film, 2006); and A Comparative Study of Psychology and Imagery in Chinese and English Traditional Nursery Rhymes (Liaoning Juvenile Press, 2002. Her works in English include Adolescent Diaries: Writings by Chinese & American Students (UIBE Press, 2000). She is a Photo Bio contributor to the column “Photo Memory” in Biography 2007, a periodical from the Beijing Arts Research Center, and she is at work on Photo Tales of Ginling; A Photo Biography of Sun Mingjing. Currently she serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Ginling Alumni Association, Beijing (G.C.A.A.Beijing), and she anticipates a photo bio workshop/clinic on caption-writing at the 6th IABA Conference.