“Beijing Hotel” and “The Great Hall of the People” are two unique series of works that Wu Yinxian created towards the end of the Cultural Revolution and early 1980s respectively. They were the only works in Chinese photography history that aim to demonstrate the power of national politics and the dominant ideology through pictures of rooms in the two buildings that were a synonym to state power. There are no similar photos that depicted the inside of a building in such a thorough manner in the period of Socialist Construction.   
 
As that period is in the past now, China has undergone drastic changes in terms of urban construction and the political environment. When looking at these old pictures, we can still see signs of the dominant ideology back then all over them. As a realist photographer and artist, Wu Yinxian created these works in his 70s and 80s during a very special historical period in China, which are not only a reflection of that period, but also a representation of his artistic pursuit and ideals.
 
Wu Yinxian studied fine arts in Shanghai in the 1920s. His early photos were about the hard lives of the working class in Shanghai, featuring excellent composition and lighting techniques. He was the cinematographer of early films that were extremely popular among the public, e.g. “Road Angel” (Ma Lu Tian Shi), “Turbulent Times” (Feng Yun Er Nv), “Urban Landscape” (Du Shi Feng Guang) and “United” (Sheng Si Tong Xin). In the 1940s, he managed to take a number of splendid pictures of Mao Zedong and other CPC leaders in Yanʼan in spite of highly difficult conditions, such as the lack of lighting sources and expired films, making these pictures a milestone in Chinese photography history (which can also be called the photo history of Chinese politics). Wu Yinxian enjoyed a very long and prolific career and left us with many photo and film masterpieces.