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This book collects Li Qiang’s classic photographs from 1981 to the present with three chapters: Northern Homeland, Distant Memory, and City Encounter. Li Qiang applies black and white images to record the changes in the lifestyle and cultural landscape of this era, from his hometown of Liyaoxian in northern Shaanxi to Xi’an, where he works and lives, and then to Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Macau in the south. These photographs record the social landscape of the current accelerated industrialisation and urbanisation, criticise the destruction of nature and original civilisation, and pay attention to the state of individual existence. This deep humanistic sentiment is placed in every frozen moment, allowing us to refocus on the freshness and touching of daily life that has long been common place. Li’s influence on contemporary photography is not only reflected in his absolute adherence to his own aesthetic system, but also in his personal understanding between his hometown and modernity, and between himself and the times, providing a unique path for the innovation and expression of photographic language.

Li Qiang is a contemporary photographer, also engaged in calligraphy and painting. Born in Dingbian, Shaanxi Province in 1959. He studied painting by himself in his early years. In 1985, he entered the Photography Department of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts to study. Since 1998, he has taught in the Photography Department of Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1981, he has successively taken series of photographic works such as Rural Life in Northern Shaanxi, Passing, Distant Place, Witness Without Panorama and City Encounter.