I knew the composition of that photograph looked familiar.
I do not mean to suggest by the* juxtaposition of these two death scenes that Bian Zhongyun was a Christ-like person. But there are similarities in their murders! Both knowingly submitted to their fates. Both were tortured. Oh my God, this is cracking my brain.
I am intending to see if there is something in the way that Chinese reacted to Bian's death that helps explain what they thought--what the female students who killed Bian thought, what Wang Jinyao thought, what his daughters in the photograph thought, what Bian thought.
That photograph is Mr. Wang's composition. He took several photographs of Bian's body. To document Bian's injuries was one reason, that was one thought he had. This photograph shows facial bruising but it doesn't seem reasonable to attribute the same forensic thought as to the full-body photographs. This is, at least partly, a mourning shot. It's like a photograph that would be taken in a funeral home in the West except photographs usually aren't taken in funeral homes in the West.
What was in Mr. Wang's mind when he took this photograph of his two daughters weeping by their mother's body? Whatever the answer to that question, does that answer say anything about what kind of killing he thought it was? A street crime murder? A political murder, that is an assassination? Did he think there was a transcendent meaning to his wife's killing?
* "Coincidental" deleted, 5:35 pm. I don't know for sure if Mr. Wang's positioning of the figures in the photograph was coincidental to a biblical lamentation scene. I assume so, but I shouldn't assume.
Painting: Lamentation of Christ, by the Master of the Housebook, late 15th century.
