Masks and Banners in Anti-US Shanghai Parade

In this photograph of a parade celebrating the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s founding, a man dressed as Uncle Sam walks down the Bund, a historic waterfront in Shanghai that was home in the 1940s to foreign consulates, trading houses, and banks. He is followed by “servants” wearing dog masks. Henri Cartier-Bresson captured this image while covering decolonization in Asia, traveling with his wife, Ratna Mohini, to India, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China.

While photographing Beijing in 1948, Cartier-Bresson was expelled from the city after its takeover by the People’s Liberation Army. He fled south to Shanghai, where he witnessed the collapse of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government and the city’s embrace of Communist rule.