Capturing the essence of a person, much less a country, in a photo is a notoriously difficult thing to do. Successful portrait photographers need to display the core of their subjects without falling into the trap of convenient stereotype.

As it is with all things China, stereotyping through imagery is easy to do. Snap a kid holding a Chinese flag, a farmer looking mournful, or a 16-year-old girl fixing plastic bits to a stereo on a line in Guangzhou and you’ve mirrored a large bulk of photographic work on China.

Although they often flirt with clichés, photographers Mathias Braschler and Monika Fischer narrowly avoid such hackneyed images in their exhibit, The Chinese at the Paris Beijing Photo Gallery. The Swiss duo, whose portfolio includes the likes of Ronaldino and Marilyn Manson, trained their lenses on the many faces of China, often with an unsettlingly iconic effect.

Whether it be in an office, cotton field, or hospital, subjects are often shot with such a high flash against natural light that shadows are virtually erased, giving them the appearance of being cut-and-pasted into their environs.

We were particularly struck by the research and access: the pair obviously did their homework and no small amount of fanagling to get shots like that of last living Long March participant Liu Tianyan as she sits in a green military jacket in a retirement home for revolutionaries, or of Chen Jun “Kirk,” the director of family-owned Nine Dragons Admirals Yacht Club, standing with chest puffed out in front of his slick, new Lambroghini.

Taken as a whole the exhibit presents a satisfyingly wide range of lives in this country of immense possibility.