China: The Photographs of Lois Conner

From Publishers Weekly
The China framed by Kubota's camera lens is neither a collectivist utopia lurching toward a high-tech future nor a consumer society adopting capitalist ways, trends overplayed recently in the Western press. Instead we glimpse an immensely varied, post-feudal China struggling to modernize in the face of persistently low living standards. One hundred eighty-five candid color photographs show ferryboats and junks; meat shops where slaughtered cats and dogs are sold as food; careworn peasants, student artists, nude bathers, duck farmers; ancestor worshippers, devout Muslims and Tibetan lamaists. Kubota, born in China but launched on his photographic career in the U.S., traveled through the People's Republic from 1979 to 1984. He roamed from northwestern deserts to Manchurian forests, from ice-fishing in subzero temperatures to tribal "water festivals." Yet, somehow, the Chinese people and the country's political climate remain elusive in all of this. November 25Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Since 1985, Conner has hauled a 40-pound banquet camera around China. This camera produces 7" x 17" negatives, which give her a panoramic view of the large, visually complex nation. The foreword by Jonathan Spence (sinology, Yale Univ.) is both an appreciation of Conner's work and a useful guide to the politics, culture, and economics that lie beneath her photographs. China, as presented here, is both a dusty relic and a carelessly patched together place full of dangling wires, unfinished projects, and flimsy-looking architecture that is an enduring eyesore. The Chinese, who move in and out of these images, are not camera shy; they appear ready for the modern world while often dwelling where it intersects with a muddy path through a shantytown. There is little beauty here, but there are carefully composed and lovingly textured images of a China that has mysteries yet to be revealed. Conner has made an important visual contribution for all Westerners interested in China. Expensive but recommended.DDavid Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Conner arrived in China on the first of many journeys in 1984, cherishing an affinity for traditional scroll paintings. Hoping to create images that emulated the scrolls' striking blend of pristine detail and panoramic scope, she used a seven-by-seventeen-inch banquet camera (quite a bulky contraption to haul across the rugged countryside and through bustling cities), but her stunning black-and-white photographs--printed full-size on fine paper with a platinum process that gives them, in her words, an "ethereal subtlety"--ended up being far more mysterious and complex. Each lustrous image, whether it depicts the abruptly vertical mountains of Guangxi, or a profusion of lotus leaves, or a group portrait, draws the eye deeper and deeper as it discloses layer after layer of reflections and shadows. Conner has climbed to great heights to frame immense vistas of breathtaking, even divine beauty, and focused on a more human scale to absorb tactile nuances, achieving at every range a remarkable and thrilling degree of dimensionality and drama. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
An astonishing magnum opus by one of today's great women photographers documenting the subtle beauty and dramatically changing face of China. For the past fifteen years Lois Conner has traveled alone throughout China equipped with a huge banquet camera. She photographs the landscapes and the people, documenting the ancient and unchanging geological terrain as well as the social and cultural upheaval of contemporary China. Her camera, which weighs forty pounds, produces a negative that is seven inches high and seventeen inches wide, enabling her to make breathtaking panoramas.


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Since 1985, Conner has hauled a 40-pound banquet camera around China. This camera produces 7" x 17" negatives, which give her a panoramic view of the large, visually complex nation. The foreword by Jonathan Spence (sinology, Yale Univ.) is both an appreciation of Conner's work and a useful guide to the politics, culture, and economics that lie beneath her photographs. China, as presented here, is both a dusty relic and a carelessly patched together place full of dangling wires, unfinished projects, and flimsy-looking architecture that is an enduring eyesore. The Chinese, who move in and out of these images, are not camera shy; they appear ready for the modern world while often dwelling where it intersects with a muddy path through a shantytown. There is little beauty here, but there are carefully composed and lovingly textured images of a China that has mysteries yet to be revealed. Conner has made an important visual contribution for all Westerners interested in China. Expensive but recommended.--David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.


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