The New York Times’ Lens blog features portraits of Chinese factory workers by Bloomberg photographer Lucas Schifres, who aims to show that “China is not this machine the size of a country that pops out cheap T-shirts without anybody doing it.” From Kerri MacDonald:
Many factories didn’t respond well to the unusual request from a foreign photographer. Mr. Schifres’s assistant would explain that the project was about daily life, sometimes invoking pride to persuade the factory owners to say yes.
But when they interviewed the workers, the photographer and his team found that the pride was really there.
“The answer was always, ‘Oh, we’re very proud; we’re happy that the products go all around the world,’ ” Mr. Schifres said. “‘This is good for China; this is good for our generation.’”
“They have absolutely no idea about controversies around the world about the Made in China products,” he added.
Click through for a slideshow of Schifres’ work, and see also Leslie Chang’s recent TED talk, ‘Meet China’s Factory Workers‘, via CDT.
