China Obscura by Mark Leong

The Globalist PhotoGallery

China Obscura

Photographs by Mark Leong

Published by Chronicle Books.

224 pages. 145 duotone photographs. Dimensions (in inches): 9 x 6.

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China Obscura

Photographs by Mark Leong

Arriving in mainland China by chance just a day after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, young Chinese-American photographer Mark Leong was compelled to stay.

He explored with his camera's lens the fascinating contradictions of a rapidly changing, but still intensely traditional Chinese society.

Living in Beijing and traveling across China for the past 15 years, he has captured images that astonish with their power and with his unprecedented access to both official and underground Chinese culture.

“China Obscura” is a China rarely seen, where schoolchildren learn the tenets of Mao and an addict sifts heroin on a bill bearing the Chairman's benevolent likeness. Nervous stockbrokers carry handguns and teenage rollerbladers hope for fame and financial sponsorship.

Photography gives Mr. Leong the patience to see through the relentless flurry of activity into the pockets of quiet, gaining understanding — which he otherwise might not have. As this most massive of societies surges and swells, he zeroes in on individuals, seeking something in common.

“China Obscura” is an intimate and exquisitely detailed portrait of a society accelerating toward an uncertain future, precariously straddled between old and new.

About Mark Leong

Mark Leong lives in Beijing. His photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times — and The New Yorker.

He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation and the Fifty Crows International Fund for Documentary Photography.

Adapted from text by Chronicle Books.
© 2004 Chronicle Books.

Dali, 1990. Bai minority women return from the weekend market.

Guangzhou, 1989. Workers nap after lunch.

Lijiang, 2002. Music fans gather at the Snow Mountain Music Festival, China