Who took Bethune's operation?

1939 10, the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese invaders fought fiercely at the junction of Laiyuan County and Yixian County in Hebei Province. The whole temple on the nearby hillside was temporarily used as an operating room for the wounded. Dr. party member Bethune, a Canadian doctor who volunteered to come to China to help the Anti-Japanese War, was operating on the last wounded person when Japanese reinforcements were approaching nearby. He was accidentally stabbed by a broken bone in his left middle finger.

The wound soon became inflamed. But in the following days, the military doctors continued to rescue the wounded around the front line until a soldier's neck was infected with erysipelas and developed into highly toxic septicemia. Bethune's condition was deteriorating, and he died a few days later due to lack of antibiotics such as penicillin.

While he was at the front line of the ruined temple, gunshots rang in his ears, and he was absorbed in rescuing the wounded by the operating table, photographer Wu Yinxian took a classic masterpiece. In this work, the photographer forms a perfect arc from Bethune's head, back, buttocks and lower body through a deep bow, which is connected with similar arcs formed by other military doctors' postures, reflecting a dynamic trend of concentration and cohesion. In the following years or even longer, this book "Bethune operated on the wounded in Sunjiazhuang Temple in Laiyuan, Hebei Province" was widely circulated in China. It was chosen as a textbook and became a blueprint for a generation to remember Dr. Bethune.

Now, if the audience looks back, they will see more details through familiar symbolic scenes, such as the eaves of traditional temples, the murals in a corner illuminated by sunlight, the porcelain lining basin used for surgery at the lower right, and the tattered land under the operating table. They can even find more clues about wartime documentary photography, propaganda language and red aesthetics from Bethune's numerous images. This exhibition, which recently opened in Taikang Space in Beijing, will last until165438+1October 2 1.