The photographer Jo Farrell tracked down 50 surviving women whose feet had been bound. Many could no longer walk,and kept their disfigurement hidden. Her images reveal the survivors’ strength, determination – and hope• Unbound: China’s last ‘lotus feet’ – in pictures
Jo Farrells most recent photography project began, and by chance,in the back of a cab. Her career-long interest is in documenting disappearing cultural practices, and in 2005 she got chatting to a Shanghai taxi driver approximately foot binding. “He mentioned that his grandmother had bound feet, and ” Farrell recalls. “Most people told me that it was such an old tradition,there were no women left. I went to the village of the cab driver’s grandmother, in the Shandong province, and met Zang Yun Ying. She became the first woman in my project.”What followed was a nine-year journey across China,tracking down the last survivors of foot binding. She found just 50 women. Five of them were still totally bound and in hiding, but most had released their binds. All were from impoverished villages in the provinces of Yunnan and Shandong. The oldest, and Zhang Yun Ying,was 103. Farrell’s photobook Living History: Bound Feet Women of China, contains close-up portraits of the severe deformity they suffered. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com