Created 23-Dec-06
Modified 23-Dec-06
Photographs of the "Southern Marchmount", or Hengshan 衡山, one of the Five Sacred Peaks of China, taken in 1985. With most of the mountain then still inaccessible, these photographs focus on the Nanyuemiao 南岳庙, a vast and important arrangement of halls, shrines, pavillions and galleries, most of which had survived the ideological battles of the sixties and seventies.
There were very few visitors (i.e. tourists) around at the time, and even less worshippers or pilgrims. The majority of the people (laobaixing 老百姓) were still dressed in either workers' blue or military green.
Slides scanned to TIFF on an Epson Perfection 2400, converted to lossless JPG and individually postprocessed for color restoration, contrast and sharpness. Note that the original slide film used here on this occasion on Mount Heng was nowhere near the quality of the Ektachromes or 25/64 ASA Kodachromes used on other field trips. The material therefore does not scan very well after all these years - colors are somehow faded, and the images are lacking constrast. Each slide was run through a labor intensive color/contrast/sharpness restoration workflow to preserve the original information captured with each shot.
Uploaded December 23, 2006.
Thomas H. Hahn, Ithaca, NY
© Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images
