In The Eye Of The Storm

Revisiting a Chinese photographer’s work in the wake of his arrest

- KARISHMA KOSHAL

A WOMAN clutches an infant in a cloud of dust as three children wait behind her; a flock of sheep made of cement stands in a dusty field with discoloured grass; the skies in Inner Mongolia and Hebei province are uniformly brown and grey. A fog hangs over Lu Guang’s photographed landscapes, adding a dystopian quality to them. The dust and soot on the faces of nearly all of the people photographed by Lu, a Chinese photographer, reveal that despite its formidable economic growth, the country’s ecosystems are in crisis.

Lu’s project Aids Village in Henan documents residents of China’s Henan province, many of whom had been subjected to illegal blood transfusions that resulted in an AIDS epidemic. As a consequence of his coverage of the villages, the Beijing authorities and the Henan provincial government were moved to improve the living conditions in the villages. The Henan government even relied on Lu’s photos to identify people and provide them with daily necessities and free medicines. “That’s when I realised that my photography could have a real impact and it gave me a sense of mission,” Lu said, in a 2018 interview with the Financial Times.