Traces by Ian Teh

My review of Ian Teh's Traces (Deep Sleep Editions, 2011) is now on Photo-eye.

Over the past twenty years, large swaths of China's landscape have been transformed and denuded of their natural resources in an effort to propel the country into the 21st century. The skyscrapers of Shanghai or Beijing superficially display progress, but powerful political forces and willful ignorance often hide the environmental cost of such rapid development. This is not unique to China. All countries and their citizens prefer to remain ignorant of, or resigned to, the demands and toll we place on the earth in order to live the lives we live. Ian Teh's Traces (Dark Clouds) is really two bodies of overlapping work that examine the rapidly industrialized landscapes of China's remote provinces, as well as their human costs. Teh's unique approach to the subject not only elevates the work above much recent work on China, but also offers a disturbing and powerful vision of China's ongoing transformation.

Read the rest here.