Sze Leong received a BA from University of California at Berkeley in 1993, and an MA from Harvard University in 1998. In 2005, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. An ethnic Chinese who grew up in Mexico, Britain, and the United States, he turned to China for his series History Images because it offered "histories recorded in urban form, all simultaneously occurring, all in the midst of change." The History Images "are records of cities in time, in the process of perishing, disappearing, or starting anew." Leong has noted that "ironically, China's current economic revolution is facilitating the physical destruction of history that was called for during the Cultural Revolution."
The foreground in Moganshan Lu, Putuo District, Shanghai, occupied by industrial and warehouse buildings, represents a relatively recent, if unglorious, past. We look across the broad, somewhat decrepit roofs toward a new luxury housing development still under construction, its upper floors still girded by cloth-wrapped bamboo scaffolding. Although the boxy towers offer a view of the river, just barely visible at the left of the photograph, they are crowded together and offer little evidence of gracious living. The gray haze that hangs over the city, air pollution endemic to Chinese cities, further contributes to the sense that this urban renewal may not be an improvement.
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