Shanghai : A History in Photographs, 1842 - Today

"Shanghai" is a visual history that tells the story of modern China as witnessed by this romantic city. The end of the Opium War in 1842 effected a dramatic transformation, turning a sleepy backwater into a bustling treaty port. Over the intervening 160 years, Shanghai has been shaped by outside forces - foreign concessions, Japanese invasions, the arrival of the Communists and the cult of Mao, they have all played their part in sculpting today's Shanghai. China's turbulent history is traced through Shanghai's evocative, beautiful, and sometimes painful images. As we reach the present day with its helter-skelter development, lavish wealth is juxtaposed against grinding poverty, and documented through the lenses of Shanghai's most important contemporary artists. Told through rare official archive photographs, images taken from private collections, new commissions, and co-author Liu Heung Shing's own work, "Shanghai" is the definitive history of the most beautiful of China's cities. "Shanghai" will be available as both hardcover and paperback, and will be for sale inside the Shanghai hall of the World Expo 2010.

Liu Heung Shing was born in Hong Kong in 1951. He began his career as a photojournalist covering the death of Chairman Mao Zedong in 1976. He was the first Chinese person to win a Pulitzer Prize, for his coverage of the collapse of the USSR. Liu is the author of China After Mao (Penguin, 1982), USSR: Collapse of an Empire (Associated Press, 1992), and editor of China, Portrait of a Country (Taschen, 2008). He has been named as one of the 100 most influential figures in contemporary history by Photo magazine. Karen Smith is the foremost authority on contemporary Chinese art, and is an art historian, curator, and collector. She was the curator of many high profile exhibitions, including The Real Thing (Tate Liverpool, 2007) and Chinese Photography and Video (Kunstmuseum, Wolfsburg). Smith is the author of Nine Lives: The Birth of Avant-Garde Art in New China (Scalo, 2006). She lives in Beijing, where she is involved in numerous philanthropic projects.