Through the looking glass

Chen says the idea for his album came from a book by Bai Yansong, a news anchor in China Central Television, who said that he had found several well-illustrated books on Chinese minorities in Japan, but none of the authors was Chinese. "Recording is a photographer's responsibility," says Chen. "I wanted to express my understanding of the Chinese nation as a huge family through my camera."

Chen was born in 1958 in the poor areas of Shanghai. His meager earnings in a factory were not enough to support his interest in photography. He eventually set up a small company in the early 1990s to make company brochures. Today, his company specializes in photography, designing and printing.

As vice-chairman of the Shanghai Photographers' Association, Chen has published a dozen albums on Shanghai's urban life and initiated many projects to record life-changing events in China.