Zhang Xiao (photographer)

Zhang Xiao (, born 23 November 1981, in Yantai) is a Chinese photographer who has published several series of photographs of China in flux.
Life and career.
Zhang graduated in architecture from Yantai University in 2005. From 2006 to 2009, he worked in Chongqing as a photographer for the "Chongqing Morning Post" (《重庆晨报》). From the start, he carried two cameras: one for work, and a cheap medium format camera for personal use.
Zhang has been inspired by the photography of Diane Arbus, Alec Soth and Boris Mikhailov.
"They".
"They" is a series of photographs mostly taken while Zhang was working in Chongqing; they are of scenes in Chongqing itself but also nearby on the Yangtze and Jialing rivers and elsewhere. The colour photographs are square format, and employed a Holga camera. A book of the photographs was published in China in 2012; two years later a smaller selection was published in Paris.
"Coastline".
For "Coastline", Zhang "visited every town and city along the Chinese coastline", from 2009 to 2013. The photographs are colour again, but this time Zhang used a Mamiya 7 II camera. Zhang has described the coastline as "[China's] first area of impact from external culture and the rapid economic development; the series "records subtle and surreal moments of life by the sea".
Cited by Agnès Sire as showing an intimate and contemporary China without any exoticism, "Coastline" won 2011, and as a result was widely exhibited and published in book form in Arles by Actes Sud in 2011. Three years later a different selection was published in Kowloon by Jiazazhi Press, and a smaller selection in Tokyo by Zen Foto Gallery.
"Envelopes".
In China photojournalists are offered cash for their positive comment on a topic they are covering. Although in his career as a photojournalist Zhang declined such offers of envelopes containing large sums of money where he considered it unconscionable to do so, he accepted those with smaller sums where he considered the topic insignificant. He collected the envelopes, which he has exhibited.
"Shanxi".
Zhang used a Holga again for the square, colour photographs of traditional rituals surrounding the lunar new year in Shaanxi. The book "Shanxi" was first published by Little Big Man in the United States; Sean O'Hagan describes it as "a seductive book, a glimpse of a world of pagan custom that somehow endures against the odds, dreamlike and entrancing".