PETE SAMPSON: CHINA / FACE
Peter Sampson’s ‘China/Face Photography’ is the result of a project that began in Beijing in 2009, and paused at the end of a five month period in Northern Thailand in 2014.
‘Most of my portraits are of young women working, living and studying in Beijing. They are overwhelmingly from other parts of China and are part of the, literally, millions of Chinese migrant workers in Beijing – men and women – who work on building sites, in massage parlours, and in restaurants. They do the jobs that give the new Chinese, and expat, rich a reason to remain in that most polluted and environmentally unfriendly of cities. ‘
‘There is an enthusiasm for photography amongst Chinese people, and an almost narcissistic obsession with beauty. Those are, in some ways, wonderful ingredients for a photographer.’
‘A small number were shot in Northern Thailand – a part of the world in which there remains a view that to photograph a person is to capture a part of their being. The portraits from Thailand are in fact of young Burmese women, who have made the short journey into Northern Thailand in search of a better life.
‘These days, we are bombarded with negative and sometimes tragic images and stories about people who move across the globe in search of a good and different life. I hope that my photographs are about more than narcissism, and that they represent the face of people on the move in a different light. My portraits are of real people, living hard lives, in cities and places that take with one hand while welcoming with another. Yes, I hope I’ve captured a kind of beauty, but I also hope to have documented something more than that.’
