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Award-winning pollution images of China break the heart – photojournalism matters

 

I’m Chinese American. My grandparents left China’s Guangdong province in the 1910s and 1930s.

These images of pollution in the Middle Kingdom from Chinese photographer Lu Guang nearly made me ill.

Photojournalism, executed well and by those who have studied the art, still matters.

Lu recently won the W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography for his images made over a four-year period.

In Photo District News, reporter Holly Stuart Hughes notes:

Guang says he will use the $30,000 grant to expand his travels in hopes of ‘shocking authorities’ about the effects of industrial pollution.

I’m posting three of his images not to steal his documentary work.

Rather, it’s to convey a side of China that many who have never traveled there – and those who have visited - might not see.

Yes, in many ways, China has improved dramatically and quickly over the recent decades.

But given these photographs, there has been a true cost to economic and industrial modernization.

 

 

On my many trips to China, I’ve seen pollution but nothing to the extent that Lu has documented over the years.

In 1994, I pedaled my mountain bike through Anyang – the same city in the top photograph – during my 1,200-mile solo trek through China.

On some days, I wiped my face and knew I was covered in coal dust. I often thought about what it was doing to my body.

But I was thousands of miles away from a doctor in the United States.

So, I probably did something that people who feel they have to work around coal to earn a living probably do: I tried not to dwell on it.

Besides, at the end of each day’s ride, my primary goal was to find safe lodging, running water and a hot meal.

Once during my trip, I stopped and asked a peasant for directions.

On the ground, coal dust surrounded him. He clutched a long shovel.

Black dust covered him from his hair to his shoes.

I didn’t have the gumption, at that moment, to take out my bulky camera and make a picture.

I also didn’t even tell him something that you might hear, given his standing in life: You know, you might want to go visit a doctor. 

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a high-government official. Or a taxi driver. Or a university professor. Or a parent. Or a supermarket employee. Or a peasant. Or a construction worker. Or a club-hopping hipster. Or a member of the new middle class.

It really doesn’t matter what country you’re in, either.

These images are arresting.

 

 

My wife spotted them on a Chinese Web site. Then, I walked into the room, stood and instantly recognized the country and problem.

My young son entered the room. We all looked at the images together until my wife and I realized some were graphic in terms of health and the end of life.

We decided it was time for our son to go wash up.

I know it’s easy to fall back on the standards and histories of our own countries when we venture out to places in the world - and eventually pass judgment.

Perhaps with these photographs, it’s best to strip away our status as citizens of one country and just approach as a person.

From there, we can backtrack to piece questions and answers together to come up with some type of logical conclusion to what we’ve seen.

I’ve written about my experience as a Chinese American who has returned to my ancestral homeland.

Even after all these years, I’m still asking questions about the place.