Opening party for China Obscura by Mark Leong. exhibition will run from Sept 14th to Nov 14th

China Obscura -- Arriving in mainland China by chance just a day after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, young Chinese-American photographer Mark Leong was compelled to stay and explore with his camera's lens the fascinating contradictions of a rapidly changing but still intensely traditional Chinese society. Living in Beijing and traveling across China for almost twenty years, he has captured images that astonish with their power and with his unprecedented access to both official and underground Chinese culture. This is a China rarely seen, where schoolchildren learn the tenets of Mao and where nervous stockbrokers carry handguns. This selection of photographs from the highly-acclaimed China Obscura is an intimate and exquisitely detailed portrait of a society accelerating toward an uncertain future, precariously straddled between old and new.

Mark Leong lives in Beijing. His photographs have appeared in Time, Newsweek, Fortune, The New York Times, and The New Yorker. He is represented by Redux pictures.