Description

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798 is photographer Zhu Yan's record of the spaces and the people of Factory 798: artists in their studios, designers, gallery owners, restaurant and bar owners, workers and staff. These people are the new "workers," who have helped to create the somewhat controversial Soho-style community of contemporary art and culture in Beijing. Zhu Yan used an 8 x 10 format camera to document this booming culture in beautiful black-and-white images. With acerbic texts by art critic Yin Jinan and photography critic Li Jiangshu, the book is more than just a photographic journal by one of China's top photographers: it is also an essential document of a city struggling to find its modern identity, and to place itself firmly on the global contemporary art map.