The Poor in Spirit - Agence VU'

The Poor in Spirit

Catholicism in China has had a history of over seven hundred years. Especially since the founding of New China, it has experienced many ups and downs, but its adherents have never disappeared. Especially in some out-of-the-way rural areas.

Publisher : Unicorn
Release Date : January 1st, 2019
ISBN : 9781912690053
Book Size : 30,5 x 30,5 cm
Language : English
168 pages

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Catholicism in China has had a history of over seven hundred years. Especially since the founding of New China, it has experienced many ups and downs, but its adherents have never disappeared. Especially in some out-of-the-way rural areas, Catholicism represents important spiritual sustenance for many, and penetrates all aspects of daily life.

Yang Yankang spent ten years in the Shaanxi countryside creating his exquisite Set of works documenting Chinese rural Catholics, The Poor in Spirit. With empathy and humour, he depicts churches and solemn ceremonies rising like apparitions in the remotest countryside.

Documentary photography practice in China started, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a focus on people marginalized by the mainstream (psychiatric patients, homosexuals, transgender people, Catholics, free artists, etc.), and on vulnerable groups deliberately neglected by the powerful elites. These images by Yang Yankang demonstrate a courage in facing Chinese social reality – the images themselves have a visual intensity, and the photographer expresses compassion through them.