China: Portrait of a People

I am a Mainland Chinese who grew up during the 10 years of Cultural Revolution. At the end of my graduate study in 1986, I went on a hitch-hiking trip to Tibet with a friend of mine. We had 45 RMB Yuan, a camera, and 4 rolls of films with us. We spent a month on the road, riding in the back of coal-hauling trucks, on the make-shift engine cover in the front of old buses, in the back of tractors, climbing over hills, and riding on the back of horses. We slept in horse stables, tents, and sometimes, for 1.5 yuan a night, we got to sleep in a bed... That was the highlight of my travel experience: 1 month, 4 provinces, and 100 photos. Tom Carter has done this for 2 years across 33 provinces in China. When I looked at the photos in his book, my eyes were swelled with tears the whole time: His photos have so accurately and vividly captured the features and the characteristics of the people from this most diversed country in the world that I call my motherland! Without reading the captions, I can tell that that young man is from Guangxi, that girl is from Sichuan, and those folks are from Heilongjiang. I can hear them talk in their dialects. I can feel their hopes. I can touch their spirits... They have aroused my desire to talk with them and laugh with them again. They reminded me so much of everything I saw in my little excursion over twenty years ago. It was a journey down the memory lane but it is more. It tells me things that I have no experience of since I have been gone away for almost 20 years... I have lived in the United states for many years. When I go to bookstores, I am naturally attracted to the sections where I can find books about China. I have not seen another book like this - so real and so recent, capturing all the changes that have happened in China in the last 20-30 years while at the same time showing the essence and heritage of the culture. I hope more people will read this book.

If your image of the people of China is anything other than 1.3 billion unique individuals with loves, losses, joys, struggles, passions and pressures just like yours, then you need this book. Breaking the stereotype of inscrutibility, the people in these pages look you in the eye in a moving gesture of shared humanity. They come from every province of this vast nation, reflecting the rich cultural and ethnic diversity of a land with every imaginable landscape, climate and level of development. In a country isolated from the rest of the world for long periods of its history, breaking through the barrier of otherness can be a challenge for foreign visitors. Tom Carter hasethn done the hard work for you. If you are planning a trip to China, you need this book. Not just because it will give you ideas of cool places to visit, but because you'll come wanting to light up people's faces with a smile that touches their heart. Even if you have no interest in China whatsover, you'll still find these portraits uplifting and heartwarming.

A friend recommended this book to me. I must tell you that I thought I had seen all photography books and have seen pictures from places all over the world. But, my friend insisted it was great - so I got it. WOW is all I can say. I have traveled to China from the US and thought I had seen most of the country. Now I see I have probably only been to the tourist parts of China. The author, Tom Carter, takes one on a journey far beyond what an average tourist may see in the country. It is the the "real" and "everyday" China. But is much more than that. You see not just some of the sights, but something that tells much more of the story. The sights and the people...their everyday life, their landscape, their way of surviving in a changing country. From the picture of the coal miner with his amazing face and expression - to a child's laugh. Photographer Tom Carter was able to not only view but capture a China that the rest of us could only imagine. If you had told me such a country existed beyond what the state-media portrayed - I probably would not have believed it. But, in his genius to sneak some shots, befriend locals, and take pictures at perhaps the most ridiculous times, Tom Carter has captured a country and a people that is very foreign to most Westerners. The book is much larger than expected and the photographs themselves are much more personal than one may expect from a first-time photo-journalist. But, this book will put Tom Carter on the map and so much that he may have trouble in the future traveling to such places as an unknown photographer. I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone. If you have an interest in China, photography books, or just capturing the world - Tom Carter has done it and it is amazing.

I like this book. The pictures aren't meant to be National Geographic. They are meant to be "in the moment." The author talks about this in his introduction. And it works. He isn't trying to convince you to love China or to hate it. He is just showing you what he sees. This book comes with heart that many books of a similar nature miss because they are striving for perfection. When you study a foreign culture, you don't have the luxury of perfect. You only have the stunning beauty of being there in that moment. And you live and love and take pictures. Think of this as someone's summer vacation (but it is so much more) where they want you to look at their pictures of this amazing trip they took. The photos speak for the author. Sometimes they are not as crisp as a perfectionist might desire, but I guarantee you will be pulled in to this book. How can you escape the intensity of the direct gaze of such a multi-cultural people? Dive into China through the lens of a guy with a camera and a backpack. Experience a different way of living with few words. Imagine yourself there with a limited grasp of the language but a love of humanity. Then, I think, you may just grasp the true wonder of this amazing book by Tom Carter.

There are more than 1.3 billion people in China. Besides the majority Han Chinese, the population includes 56 ethnic groups numbering over one hundred million. Over the course of 2 years and 35,000 miles, photojournalist Tom Carter captured it ALL on film. For their historical value alone, the 800+ photos in Portrait are priceless. I highly doubt if there will ever be another book about China like this one. Carter's anthropological-like study of China stands apart in its genre, as it focuses expressly on the PEOPLE of China. In addition to documenting the everyday life of "ordinary" people, Carter also backpacked to the most remote areas of China to observe reclusive ethnic minorities such as the red-turbaned Pai Yao minority of northern Guangdong and the resplendent Dong and Miao tribes of eastern Guizhou. From Inner Mongolian nomads to newlyweds in Hong Kong, from the teenage girl living in Chengdu dressed like an American punk rocker to the soot covered coal miner in Southern Shanxi, Carter's camera documented the complexity and diversity of China like no other book ever has (or likely ever will). There is an old saying that a picture is equal to a thousand words. In CHINA: Portrait of a People, each picture is worth TEN thousand words, maybe more. The consensus amongst backpackers is that China is probably the single most challenging country in the world to visit. As such, in order to reach certain locations, Carter had to travel on foot into some seriously rugged terrain. To get an idea what I'm talking about, consider that China, almost the size of the United States, uses only sixteen percent of its land for growing crops. The rest is either mountains or desert. To take the up-close and personal pictures in CHINA: Portrait of a People, Carter also risked jail multiple times; was stranded in Tibet; faced exhaustion and hunger; was beaten by drunks; plagued by a nearly-fatal viral infection, and risked being shot by North Korean border guards. And that was only the first year! If you plan to visit China, buy this book before you go. On the other hand, if you are an armchair tourist who never strays far from home, Carter's Portrait will not disappoint. The warmth of the Chinese comes cross in every image from cover to cover. You will laugh along with the Tibetan nomads seeing their photo for the very first time, and scratch your head at the eight-year-old acrobat student at Wuqiao bending herself like a folded sheet of paper. Between the covers of Portrait, you will start a vicarious journey visiting China like few photographers have ever accomplished. With this thick, 600-page book, you too can travel on this 35,000 mile journey without ever leaving your home. Or better, it will inspire you to make a similar journey. There is no way that this review can do justice for the monumental accomplishment that is CHINA: Portrait of a People. Seeing is believing. Lloyd Lofthouse, author of "My Splendid Concubine"