Although at that time, China was still not very accessible to foreign travellers, I had the opportunity, due to my social science research activities, to visit it in 1982, thanks to a collective trip organized on the questions of technology transfers. I’ve been there four times over the years.
In 1982, Chinese leaders had just launched, a few years earlier, the new policy called open door to foreign capital and technology, which would drag the country into the spiral of capitalist globalization. China, which I could discover at the time, was still very little affected by this new policy of openness. Since then, China has embarked on a profound transformation based on an unprecedented hybridization between a certain conception of liberalism and the authoritarianism of the regime founded on the omnipotence of the ruling Communist Party. A mutation that seems to upset, at least partially, the cultural base of this great civilization in favour of international standards. A mutation in which China’s spectacular economic dynamism is tarnished by growing inequalities, the working conditions of certain categories of workers, human rights abuses and the repression of certain minorities.
Much has been said and written about this new China, its capacity and its will to become a great world economic power, if not the first of them. As a photographer, my point of view is that of a witness, Western, partial and modest of these upheavals. It is in this sense that I want to show through my pictures what I perceive of the way in which the daily life of Chinese people has changed or not, people I have had the chance to meet or just cross paths. Photographs to speak, in my own way, of the evolution of this civilization and this great people who continue to fascinate me and for whom I maintain a very great attachment.
The photographs presented here, all in black and white, only cover my trip in 1982. Many other photos, in black and white, but also in colour taken during more recent reports are notably visible in the book "La Chine au tournant du siècle".
