About the Photographs

These panoramas were made during my initial visit to China in the primarily Muslim Ningxia Hui Autonomous Zone, an area in the west that pushes into Inner Mongolia, and in Shaanxi Province, home to the Terra Cotta Warriors. While the pictures evidence discovery by the photographer of these areas, it is hoped the images also carry to their viewers the beauty and humanity of this amazing place and people. There is a cinematic quality to these pictures — an unfolding of events readable in the choreography of the scenes depicted. City streets of China are often dense with life and activity. The sense of space, notably personal space, differs in its physical closeness from what an American or European may be accustomed to. The long frame provides a wide field for unfolding of interaction between the portrait subjects going about day to day activities. The locations are presented in such a way as to eschew exoticism and understand the places and characters as approachable and knowable. I have more than once received comments at exhibitions in the United States about these and other panoramas made in China along the lines of, “They just look normal. They just look like us.” The comments surprised me, but I guess we generally know this vast area and most of the world from a distance and filtered by the realities of economy, territorial control, politics, and nationalism. But on the ground and face to face; yes, the people are pretty much like “us.”