“With a $3 trillion war bill and an economy that flounders as China’s soars, could America’s era of dominance on the world stage be coming to an end? Mick Brown and the photographer Alec Soth travelled across America and China to observe how the future of these two great nations is intertwined, and to find out whether, in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics and the US election, we are on the brink of a new world order. In the first of a four-part series, they meet army recruitment officers in Virginia and cadets at West Point.” Part 2: “Once symbolic of optimism and certainty, America’s credit-crunched suburbs may be facing a decline as dramatic as that of Detroit, itself once a beacon of industry.” (found via Colin Pantall’s blog) Part 3: “The thrusting tower blocks of Chongqing stand testament to the headlong economic growth that is changing the lives of millions of Chinese. Mick Brown and the photographer Alec Soth continue their investigation into the contrasting fortunes of the US and China by exploring the world’s fastest-growing city.” Part 4: “With the Beijing Olympics, China hopes to cement its position alongside the USA on the podium of global power. In the final part of their special investigation, Mick Brown and photographer Alec Soth examine how both nations are playing the Games.”
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Over at The Guardian, there’s a new feature up called Portraits of China. I know this is an incredibly vague way to say this, but what bothers me about the photography a little is that everybody is striking some heroic pose (or maybe it’s just too much of an influence of commercial/editorial photography). In any case, it’s an interesting series, even though for me it’s not even remotely close to Liu Zheng’s The Chinese, which I keep coming back to.
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Of all the photos from the earthquake region in China, this one stopped me in my tracks and had me stare at the screen for quite a while: A student’s hand, the dead hand still firmly gripping the pen, with the rest of the body buried in the rubble of a school (found here).
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