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Entertainment
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Written by JFK Miller
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Monday, 03 November 2008 10:29 |
T om Carter gets around. Thirty three provinces, 56 ethnic cultures, 10,000 portraits. The 35-year-old American spent two years on the road photographing people from every nook and cranny in China for his ambitious 640-page coffee-table book, China: Portrait of a People. His stated mission: “To dispel the stereotype of the Chinese as a homogeneous single nationality.”
Did he succeed? Yes, and no. No, because the plan was flawed from its inception (who, except for the ignorant, actually believes the Chinese are a single, heaving entity?) Yes, because Carter is a skilled enough photojournalist to catch his subjects in candid, off-guard moments before, as he puts it, “Life stops to stare at you.” Witness the Shanghai traffic warden poised to tell him to take a hike; the cheerful miner from Linfen whose face is blackened by soot; the tattooed Macau gangster with an effete ginger quiff.
"...the limitations of this photographic book to show the “real China” lie not with the artist but with his choice of art form." But there is no story, no narrative. Carter’s photos merely capture moments in time. Mian Mian, in the book’s epilogue, describes Carter as a “special kind of tourist” whose camera tells the story of modern China. It doesn’t, because it can’t overcome the strictures of the photographic medium. Some of the pictures are lovely, true. And Carter is “special” in the sense that he attempted to exist side by side with the ordinary people of China by living as they do during his two-year odyssey. Ultimately, however, the limitations of this photographic book to show the “real China” lie not with the artist but with his choice of art form.
China: Portrait of a People is published by Blacksmith Books.
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