i love this photo, #1

© Mark Leong

I love this photo by the photographer Mark Leong. Leong is a Chinese-American photographer who's been documenting life in China since 1989. Images of Chinese transformation are familiar these days, but Mark Leong's work goes deeper than most. His photographs of small moments and everyday life in the book China Obscura add up to a larger, more complete picture of Chinese society than we're used to seeing. In this picture, the perilous, uncertain, fragile, scary, enormous, and mysterious changes taking place in China are seen in this little child climbing (or descending?) a wall. It is artful and sensitive photojournalism.

Here's an essay about the work of Mark Leong and James Whitlow Delano by Marcel Saba. Lastly, I have to add how much I like the design of the book. It measures just 9x6 inches, and it's small scale is refreshing and appropriately intimate.