Club Lunch: How Photojournalism Helps Write History

In the course of multiple assignments through Asia, and across the shifting geopolitical landscape that marked the last decades of the 20th century, Liu Heung Shing has photographed two of its seminal historic events. First, the rise of China through the upheaval of its economic reforms; second, the collapse of the Soviet Union under the stewardship of Mikhail Gorbachev. Presenting works from his new book, A Life in a Sea of Red, he will have a conversation about the role of documentary photography with Phil Tinari, director of the Ullens Center of Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing.

Liu was recognised “Best Photographer” by the Associated Press as in 1989 and 1991. In 1992, he shared with his colleagues in Moscow, a Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography for documenting the collapse of the Soviet Union. Liu is the author of China After Mao (1983 Penguin), China, Portrait of a Country (2008 Taschen), 1911: The Road to Revolution, (Hong Kong University Press), and co-author of Shanghai, Portrait of a City (Penguin Viking). He is the founder of the Shanghai Center of Photography, which opened in 2015.

Philip Tinari is Director of UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing, one of China’s leading institutions of contemporary art. He is a contributing editor of Artforum, having launched the magazine’s Chinese edition in 2008. He was also co-curator of the 2017 exhibition Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Mr. Tinari is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. He holds degrees from Duke and Harvard.