Foreword
There is beauty in the urban sprawl of America, sometimes where you least expect it. In this book, there are images of the United States that many Americans do not see, or more precisely, don not see as Dong Lin has. The detritus of daily life, the despairing souls who congregate in our streets: what makes many of us avert our eyes has drawn Dong Lin’s. The results are remarkable.
I was struck silent the first time Dong Lin showed me his pictures, several years ago in Beijing, where he grew up. He was already among China’s foremost photographers in black-and-white, and his skill found a marvelous home in Tibet, where stark images of religious fervor and distinctive ethnicity played out in his pictures. Even an untrained eye could see unusual depths of human emotion in his photographs. They are at once chilling and warm, evocative and telling, reassuring and shocking in their vision of life. Now he has trained his camera on American cities.
Sometimes it takes an outsider to see what natives cannot. Dong Lin’s strength in shooting pictures is not only in the freshness of his perspective but also in the exactness of his eye. Never without his camera, he is always watching for the moment when the rich, multifarious shades of life coalesce in his viewfinder.
Seth Faison
Shanghai Bureau Chief, The New York Times