FOR the past three decades, photographer Jiang Jian, who specializes in portraits, has focused his lens on China’s rural famers, construction workers, orphans and village life.

“I seldom photograph sceneries. All my pictures are about ordinary people, mostly those who are struggling for their lives,” he said. “They are the participants, builders and contributors to China’s development, marking the country’s evolution in different times. They deserve our respect.”

The 62-year-old photographer from central China’s Henan Province showed off his works at an exhibition in Shanghai last month. The exhibition was split into three parts — City Builders (construction workers), Masters (Chinese rural farmers) and Orphans.

Jiang spent, on an average, 5-to-10 years on each of the series, venturing into places where they worked or lived, befriending them and then going back several years later to take new pictures of them.

“It was a long run of course, but also interesting to see how they had changed after so many years. For us, it was like two old friends meeting again,” Jiang said.

The photographer’s life has also echoed with the country’s ups and downs. From 1969 to 1978, Jiang was sent to rural north China as an “intellectual youth” to work as a farmer and electrician. He spent time repairing all kinds of farming tools.

Orphan project

But Jiang did not give up. He kept playing the violin, and in 1978, enrolled himself at the Music Institute of Shenyang, Liaoning Province.

After graduating, he became a violinist with the Henan Province Dance and Sing Troupe.

But soon Jiang found his niche in photography. Since 1980s, he started taking pictures of local cultures and the daily life of rural farmers in his hometown in Henan. “Unlike other photographers who love travelling around, I stayed back in my hometown, photographing my fellow farmers and recording their lives through my lens,” he said.

In 2004, Jiang took pictures of 12 orphans under the age of 16, who lived with their grandparents.

“I decided to record and witness their growth and changes,” Jiang said.

The series Archives of Orphans lasted for a decade, capturing the growing faces of the orphans and their lives.

Jiang returned twice — in 2009 and 2014 — to take pictures of them. The 48 black-and-white as well as color portraits in 12 groups recorded the orphans’ 10-year life.

Sad stories

Li Huiping, 15, was raised by his grandfather Xu Naitao. Her father was sentenced to death for killing her mother when Li was just four years old. Jiang took three pictures of her — Li at 4, 9 and 14. In the first black-and-white picture, the four-year-old stares at the camera with fear and shyness, but five years later Li, now 9, proudly poses with her grandparents with a school prize in her hand.

However, in the third picture taken in 2014, the girl in shorts and high-heels with dyed hair has grown into a tall and mature teenager. “She told me she had quit school and had joined some kind of a gang,” Jiang said. “But she regretted dropping out of school. I was worried about her.”

Jiang has managed to send her back to school with the help of his local friends.

Ji Gaojie, 17, today works as a security guard at a Korean foot massage parlor in Zhengzhou, capital city of Henan. Jiang clicked him in his uniform, looking all smart and handsome.

But only five years ago, a 12-year-old Ji looked sad posing beside the portraits of his deceased father and grandfather. Ji was raised by his grandmother Ren Fengjiang. “He also quit school early and had taken up a job cutting trees in Zhejiang Province,” Jiang said.

On the night he took his picture, Jiang received a text message from Ji, asking him if he could introduce him to a girl. “She’d better to be an orphan like me, he said,” Jiang recalled. “I was so sad that night. He was only 17 and so desperate for the warmth of a family.”

When another orphan, who made it to a graduate school, declined Jiang’s request for a photo shoot in 2014, it suddenly occurred to him that this project should also come to an end.

“Over the past decade with my direct communication with them and their guardians, I came to understand their innermost secret emotions. I hope my photographs do not bring them into any sort of trouble,” Jiang said.

“So I ended this project, leaving their stories for the future.”

In 2007, Jiang started work on a new series “City Builders.” Within five years, he documented the lives of construction workers, who built 81 luxury villas, each of which was sold at more than 60 million yuan (US$9.4 million). They were designed by foreign architects in suburban Shanghai.

He went to the workers’ hometowns and took pictures of the villages they came from.

Jiang then superimposed the workers’ shabby living conditions of their rural homes and their working portraits on the construction sites in the fancy villas.

“I compressed the time, space and the workers into the crazy, fast-changing social background to display a sharp contrast,” Jiang said. “I hope our country will not forget these city builders.” In one picture, a construction worker stained with white paint, poses for the camera with a take-away plastic bag in front of a luxury villa. He superimposed the portrait with his dilapidated-looking home.

Construction workers

Jiang followed one construction worker Yang Sen back to his hometown in Zhoukou, Henan. They had a long talk in Yang’s old, ordinary-looking house.

The photographer asked him why he didn’t decorate his own house or build a new one. Yang answered he had no money and time.

“And he didn’t think it whether he should continue to stay and work in Shanghai or just come back and do some small business. Like many construction workers I had interviewed, he was at a loss about his future,” Jiang recalled.

Since 1985, his representative works, Scenes, Masters, Archives on Orphans and Fortifications, among others, have been exhibited in the US, Australia and the Europe. His works have also been collected by National Art Museum of China, National Art Center-French Ministry of Culture, Chinese Contemporary Art Gallery in Sydney and Valencia Museum of Modern Art in Spain.

“What I’m doing is not just a work of art. They are also social investigation projects with photos concerning ‘times’ and individual destiny,” he said.

Jiang leaves all the fundraising and donation work to his wife. “I don’t want to be labeled as a ‘social activist’ or ‘philanthropist.’ Photography is a documentary form of art. Objective and calm observation are all aimed at more accurately conveying people’s attitude and perception so as to create more profound and powerful images,” he said.