Pulitzer prize-winning photographer HS Liu shares images from 30 years of photographing China, featured in his upcoming photographic exhibition, China Dream, Thirty Years: Liu Heung Shing Photographs. He discusses 30 years of photographing the People's Republic and the ability of the photographic image to capture zeigeist, with special reference to the 1980s and 1990s. In conversation with Jean Loh.
Liu Heung Shing is a former foreign correspondent and photojournalist who has covered China, the U.S., India, South Korea, and the former Soviet Union. Named one of the 100 most influential people in contemporary photography by Paris Photo, he is also the author of several widely acclaimed books. These include China After Mao (1983) and his latest, China, Portrait of a Country (2008). His work has won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography shared with his colleagues at the Associated Press for their coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union. His exhibition, China Dream, Thirty Years: Liu Heung Shing Photographs is at the China Art Museum, Shanghai, in July.
Jean Loh is the curator of Beaugeste Photo Gallery in Shanghai. The gallery, which opened in 2007, specializes in Chinese contemporary photography. Jean, who was named "Gallerist of the Year" in 2011 by Photographers' Companion magazine, presents themed works by the best Chinese contemporary photographers in bimonthly cycles.