I first went as a student to Beijing in 1984 with a camera and a suitcase of film but not much of a plan. I found myself in a country whose young people were suddenly empowered to put their skills to use rather than let state planning order every aspect of their lives. My academic studies rapidly evolved into a vocation to photograph the changes around me. There was a demand for this: one of my first assignments being for Life magazine and then a slew of US and European publications eager to expand their coverage of all that was reshaping China and in turn the world. I chose street-level life as the most relatable to an international audience and in recent years also for Chinese eager to see how this era began.
I wrote...
The Door Opened: 1980s China: Photography: Adrian Bradshaw
British photojournalist Adrian Bradshaw came to Beijing in 1984 to study Mandarin just as everyday life was in flux. He would go on to spend three decades living in, experiencing, and recording the transformation of the reform and opening-up era. The youth whose energy and optimism seized the moment with experimentation and invention back in the first decade of the new era built the foundations of an outward-looking, successful, and confident China today. Bradshaw would stay longer than any other overseas photojournalist, bringing an empathy and understanding to his subjects that is rare.
In his twenties in the 1980s, Bradshaw was in the company of the young people who drove the reform era and built many of the features of 21st Century China: the artists, farmers, entrepreneurs, and industrialists whose enthusiasm and positivity made things happen. This energy that made history is still bursting forth.
This vast book in 500 pages broke new ground in publishing and photojournalism circles in China. Edited by the visionary curator Wang Huangsheng this extraordinary collection of colour and black and white material from hundreds of photographers both professional and amateur remains unmatched in scope. With unflinching courage to show both the brightest and darkest sides of life in the People’s Republic Wang selected many previously unpublished images along a range of themes from ‘desire’ to ‘time’, existence’ to ’relationships’. Crime and punishment, rural schools, and worker demonstrations - all sorts of subjects that were rarely seen in the state media, even the anal inspection of army recruits. Never before and rarely since, particularly in the last few years, has such a daring serving of so many slices of life been served. This important book is a reminder that despite the limitations of China’s state media and the much denigrated Western coverage of the country millions of talented eyewitnesses are out there keeping a record. I look forward to many such books in the future.
Humanism in China A Contemporary Record of Photography
Themed "Humanized China - Individualized China", the exhibition "Humanism in China" derives from the following three ideas. First,to record in detail the daily lives of ordinary Chinese in different periods of time; Second, to display the diversity of Chinese people's lives from all walks of life;Third, to promote the humanistic spirit of contemporary Chinese candid photography.
The exhibition is divided into four subjects: Existence, Relationship, Desire and Time. "Existence" reveals the contemporary Chinese people's everyday existence. "Relationship" presents the complexities and nature of relationships among nature, mankind and social environment. "Desire" stresses…
A gentle observer of a nation undergoing transformation. Riboud witnessed a wide range of people from the top leaders mingling with Western diplomats to steelworkers, farmers, and students. At a time when most foreign visitor's access was highly restricted and choreographed scenes of socialist paradise were the norm he somehow managed to capture the energy and spontaneity of his subjects. By singling out individuals who were not reacting to his presence he allows their dignity to shine through. His compositions invariably elegant and technically beyond reproach nevertheless are full of life, particularly his earlier work.
The grandmaster of 20th Century photojournalism long had a fascination with China and was fortunate to get access to the country both pre and post-revolution. These times were chaotic and characterised by social upheaval yet Cartier-Bresson finds order and meaning through close observation and attention to geometric form until the ‘decisive moment’ is reached. Civil war, political turbulence, and an undercurrent of violence were the prevailing themes of this period yet the Frenchman’s sensitivity to the humanity and strength of his subjects is what lingers in the mind long after closing the cover.
Spontaneous photojournalism has not been a feature of the People’s Republic as the state-run media prefers rigid control of any media message. One of the most distinguished early practitioners of documentary photography to challenge this dull approach was Wang Fuchun. His book on life on the long-distance trains that trundled across the country delighted and informed first his compatriots and then the world. Most of the journeys he witnessed were in the age before mass tourism and are a far cry from the world-beating high-speed trains of the 21st century. It feels like ancient history but steam-powered locomotives were still produced in China until the 1990s, the last country to give up the coal-burning dinosaurs.
China's economy has developed rapidly for 40 years. Railway is the artery of this land and is also a mirror for the rise of the Chinese economy. As a railway worker, the photographer Wang Fuchun takes pictures for people on the train to record the feelings and emotions in the narrow space on the train with almost instinctive observation and reflection. He expands the carriage of transportation vehicles to the stage of life, the space of flowing history, the platform for social contact, the happy theater and the mobile caravan. It is accumulated as time goes by and condenses life…
After the gradual normalisation of relations between China and the US and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, a small number of western journalists were allowed to open bureaus in Beijing. Access was limited and travel difficult but one talented Chinese American photojournalist really pushed the boundaries in showing the rest of the world what the long inaccessible country was like. His tenacity and eye for the telling detail were an inspiration for me to take up the challenge to devote my career to covering the historic era of change in due course. Such was Liu’s ability to cover more than his hosts were quite ready to show ethnic Chinese foreign journalists found it near impossible to gain accreditation for many years afterwards.
An entire country captures unposed and authentic in a unique collection of photographs. China is seen emerging from a frightening period of political terror into an era where its true nature can be expressed once again. In decades to come, we and those who follow us will need to look back on post-Maoist China and try to understand what was the experience then of the nearly one-quarter of humanity that is Chinese. It will, I predict, be the images in this collection by Lin Heung Shing that, more than any other single source, will most deeply touch our understanding
I’m a professional historian and life-long lover of early American history. My fascination with the American Revolution began during the bicentennial in 1976, when my family traveled across the country for celebrations in Williamsburg and Philadelphia. That history, though, seemed disconnected to the place I grew up—Arkansas—so when I went to graduate school in history, I researched in French and Spanish archives to learn about their eighteenth-century interactions with Arkansas’s Native nations, the Osages and Quapaws. Now I teach early American history and Native American history at UNC-Chapel Hill and have written several books on how Native American, European, and African people interacted across North America.
A magisterial history of Indigenous North America that places the power of Native nations at its center, telling their story from the rise of ancient cities more than a thousand years ago to fights for sovereignty that continue today
Long before the colonization of North America, Indigenous Americans built diverse civilizations and adapted to a changing world in ways that reverberated globally. And, as award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal vividly recounts, when Europeans did arrive, no civilization came to a halt because of a few wandering explorers, even when the strangers came well armed.
A millennium ago, North American cities rivaled urban centers around the world in size. Then, following a period of climate change and instability, numerous smaller nations emerged, moving away from rather than toward urbanization. From this urban past, egalitarian government structures, diplomacy, and complex economies spread…
Interested in
China,
photojournalism,
and
presidential biography?
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
China,
photojournalism,
and
presidential biography.
