‘The Olympics Have Destroyed Our Lives’

Spiegel Online profiles a new book of photography by Straits Times journalist Chua Chin Hon:

Chua Chin Hon runs the office of Singapore’s Straits Times. As a journalist, Chua has documented Beijing’s dizzying transformation over the past two years. Chua’s newly published book of photography is dominated by everyday photos of scaffolding, skyscrapers and workers in Mao jackets. Shabby apartment blocks stand side-by-side with amazing feats of architecture. Beneath towering high-tech stadiums built using the most environmentally friendly techniques available, horse-drawn wagons carry stones through clouds of dust.

“Modern China has been shaped by constant and often relentless transformation,” Chua told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Chua has tried to compile a testament of sorts to this series of changes. Some of the upheavals have been inevitably destructive or unsettling “because they happened even faster than we could perceive them.”

A slideshow of his photographs is here.

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