Launch party for "Time and Tide: Five years behind the Three Gorges Dam". A photographic odyssey charting the transformation caused by the massive Three Gorges Dam project. Construction began in December 1994, with an estimated price tag of US $25 billion. But that figure does not include the heavy social and environmental toll on the region. By June 2008, an estimated 1.24 million residents had been relocated while two cities, eleven counties, 116 towns and hundreds of villagers were flooded. Photojournalist Chua Chin Hon repeatedly visited the area for the past five years, taking pictures as the waters submerged historic townships and as new communities emerged. He captured the final days of a 1,800 year old city which was one of the last holdouts against the rising waters. He was also there as residents returned to the post-apocalyptic landscape for one final look at their devastated city, and he watched as the people of Wushan held their final dragon-boat race in what may be a vanishing custom. This eyewitness testimony brings one of China ’s biggest ever engineering project down to a personal level, charting how lives were changed forever.

BIO: Chua Chin Hon was based in Beijing for six years with The Straits Times newspaper. He left in December 2008 for a new posting at the paper's Washington bureau. He bought his first camera when he was 23.