China is embracing the modern world like never before. The transition from isolationist nation to international powerhouse, however, has not been easy. Until the 1970s, three quarters of China’s population lived in rural areas, maintaining traditional agrarian lifestyles. Today, people are on the move. Cities are growing rapidly as the entire nation industrializes, urbanizes, modernizes, and digitizes its infrastructure. While many Western nations have endured similar changes over the last 200 years, modernization in China has occurred in a relative instant, moving workers from fields to factories, and from the country into the cities in a matter of a few decades.
With candid, sometimes raw documentary imagery, Liu Xiaodi, Jiang Jian, Zhang Xinmin, Luo Yongjin, Zhou Hai, Lu Yuanmin, and Zhou Ming, the seven contemporary Chinese photographers featured in Documenting China, give us unrestricted views of this monumental transition.
A catalogue, Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change, by curator Gu Zheng complements the national traveling exhibition.
Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change was curated by Gu Zheng, developed by Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine, and organized for travel by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES). This exhibition has been made possible through the generous support of Crystal Cruises.
The Weisman’s presentation is sponsored by 
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