Views on Château Lafite Rothschild - 2018

He ChongYue is one of the most respected contemporary artists in Chinese photography. Born in Beijing in 1960, he turned to photography in 1984 and works mainly with a handmade large-format camera.

In the 2010s, he devoted himself to a sociological study of rural China: the series ‘Family Planning,’ ‘The End’ and ‘The Exempted’ all address the gradual end of rural traditions in China.

“‘The Exempted’ series highlighted recent portraits of peasants, all born before 1949 in the Yan’an region. This region was chosen for being the starting point of the ‘Long March’. These peasants represent a way of life that is tending to disappear.”

To mark the recent end of the one-child policy, He ChongYue then began his fourth and final sociological series: ‘One Child,’ a project of 400 portraits of young adults who grew up in one-child families. This project, in contrast to the previous ones, focuses on major and secondary urban centres.