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Photography
Tom Carter: Portrait of a PeoplePosted by Jeremy Goldkorn, November 24, 2008 12:37 PM
 Old man wearing fur hat  Shanxi miner  Tibetan girl
Tom Carter is a photographer who spent two years backpacking around China, taking photographs of people in every province. The result is a book called China: Portrait of a People, recently published by Blacksmith Books. You can see more of his photography on TomCarter.org, buy the book on his publisher's website, or watch a Youtube video about the book. |
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Comments on Tom Carter: Portrait of a People
From the sample photos the book appears mis-titled. I'd suggest the following:
China: Portrait of a People made Funny-looking by the Unfortunate Combination of a Fish-eye Lens and Extreme Closeup.
Although I'll admit the original title rolls off the tongue a little more freely, I'm a big one for truth in advertising...
There's also a very cool interview with Mr. Carter about his two years of travel in China at ChinaTravel.net.
He's got a way with words as well as one with the camera!
Thx Danwei for the intro to Tom Carter and his work. Beautiful stuff!
I read your stuff every day via My Times, a news aggregator provided by NY Times. Keep up the brilliant work!
I will always remember the expenses paid junket for photographers I got into after reading a news item for ex-pats in China. It consisted of three days in Tengzhou with 60 some photographers, mostly Chinese. That was much appreciated. At that time I was living and teaching in Dalian.
So I have fond memories of Danwei, Tengzhou and China.
It's unfortunate that the media drools over so much rubbish yet ignores books that shows true China. (Even Danwei is a bit guilty of this; 2-sentence review for this 600 page book?). Perhaps westerners are so used to negative coverage of China that they can't swallow anything that makes our country look good, or at least neutral.
很不幸也很奇怪，大家都会吹捧一些垃圾书籍，但却选择忽视一本真正的关于中国的好书，即使是单位Danwei对于这本六百多页的书也不过是寥寥两句话，没有过多或一些具体的评论。其实，即使是一个中国人，也是需要用心去体会了解中国的。西方人也许会习惯于去接受一些负面的中国，对于其好却是很陌生或有些抗拒，甚至有些时候都不能以较公正的态度来坦然面对。
Hmmm, an American photojournalist NOT photographing the latest scandal or old Chinese crap? Could Carter be a foreign agent and his new book the latest release by the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party?
My wife and I have had the privalage of seeing Tom Carter's talented work. His eye captures the heart and soul of China. By the way, Jon, post for November 27, 2008 at 7:04 AM, Tom isn't working for the Communist Party. He wasn't interested in the seventy million members of the Communist Party that rules China He was interested in the other 1.3 billion that have no say in the government.
I agree with 铃儿响叮当's comments: foreign journalists are interested only in Chinese scandal, while foreign tourists are only interested in China's pretty places. Tom Carter's photos of Chinese PEOPLE are a rare treat. I look forward to seeing this book (couldn't find it at the Bookworm; has it been banned from the Mainland?)
Hi if you're looking for this book please contact me, we can either ship it to you from the publishing house in HK or Shanghai, or the best,
philtzou(at)hotmail.com