Liu Heung-shing's Photographs and Commentary
Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Liu Heung-shing recently released a book including works by 88 Chinese photographers, along with his own, that charted China’s evolution from 1949 up the present. He picked 70 of these photos to show in an exhibition at AO Vertical Art Space. He takes Leanne Mirandilla on a tour of the exhibit.
This photograph hangs in the bathroom in my courtyard house in Beijing. It’s very interesting because lots of people don’t get the idea behind it. Lots of Chinese officials came to my house, went to the loo, came out, and had this smile on their face. Because, politically, here is the emperor [Deng Xiaoping], and Zhou Ziyang and Hu Yaobang were both his loyal successors, but he purged them both [dismissed them from their high ranking posts] in 1989.
Photographs like this, today, when the Chinese look at them, they really crack up. The Chinese love like this in the park because they don’t have private space. Literally, in one room, there are four or five family members. And sometimes in the park there are queues of people waiting, hoping [the other] couples will finish their conversation and move on. [When I took this picture,] I was actually with Peter Scott—he’s the chairman of the World Wildlife Fund. They were all discussing this adorable baby panda, and I said, “I’ve had enough of this panda,” and I looked back into the woods and saw them [the couple].
