Book of the Week

China
by Hiroji Kubota

China, with a population of more than 1.2 billion, is a land of tremendous extremes. Over a period of six years from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Hiroji Kubota was granted access to the numerous provinces that surround and make up the vast country. This monograph includes the deserts and the hills of northwestern Xinjiang, the mountain plateaus of Tibet, the forests and towns of Manchuria, the Yellow River Valley; major population centers such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Canton, and Shanghai; and finally the lush rice paddies of the southeast. The book contains 186 stunning full-color images that portray an incredibly diverse and beautiful country on the eve of great change as traditions are confronted with modernization.

A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever.

Raghu Rai