Product Details Hardcover W.W. Norton & Company Published 1985 From Publishers Weekly The China framed by Kubota's camera lens is neither a collectivist utopia lurching toward a high-tech future nor a consumer society adopting capitalist ways, trends overplayed recently in the Western press. Instead we glimpse an immensely varied, post-feudal China struggling to modernize in the face of persistently low living standards. One hundred eighty-five candid color photographs show ferryboats and junks; meat shops where slaughtered cats and dogs are sold as food; careworn peasants, student artists, nude bathers, duck farmers; ancestor worshippers, devout Muslims and Tibetan lamaists. Kubota, born in China but launched on his photographic career in the U.S., traveled through the People's Republic from 1979 to 1984. He roamed from northwestern deserts to Manchurian forests, from ice-fishing in subzero temperatures to tribal "water festivals." Yet, somehow, the Chinese people and the country's political climate remain elusive in all of this. November 25 Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal The 185 photographs presented here are chosen from 200,000 that Kobota took in China between 1978 and 1985. He filmed all regions, including tropical Kishuangbanna, Guilin's mountains (from the air), the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, and the snow and smokestacks of northern Manchuria. He generally saw people in group activity, whether at prayer or wrestling or bicycling to work, and he waited for the precise moment to photograph. The results are superb, calling the viewer to pore over the wealth... read more Book Description An astonishing magnum opus by one of today's great women photographers documenting the subtle beauty and dramatically changing face of China. For the past fifteen years Lois Conner has traveled alone throughout China equipped with a huge banquet camera. She photographs the landscapes and the people, documenting the ancient and unchanging geological terrain as well as the social and cultural upheaval of contemporary China. Her camera, which weighs forty pounds, produces a negative that is seven inches high and seventeen inches wide, enabling her to make breathtaking panoramas. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition. |