Faraway faces: the vanishing world of Southwest China

Southwest China is one of the most exotic places on earth. Encompassing the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi and Sichuan, the region is vast. Nearly half of China’s entire ethnic population lives there too. These people call themselves Miao, Dong, Zhuang, Yi, among many other names. Their heartlands are remote and hard to reach. Very few outsiders have seen their customs and ways. For us, their very names ring of adventure, strangeness, and wonderment. For them, life has changed little over the centuries. Theirs has always been a world apart. But not for much longer. New roads and travel networks are whittling down walls of isolation. The 21st century, riding on the coat tails of China’s economic revolution, gnaws relentlessly at ancient habits, values and traditions.

As a passionate visual chronicler of Asia and its peoples, photographer Jimmy Lam has traveled Southwest China for the past ten years. He has personally witnessed the change and the cultural transformations. And their rapidity fills him with an urgency to document these “passing moments,” as he calls them. The result? Lam, an associate of the Royal Photographic Society whose work has been shown and acclaimed internationally, has produced a book that is both celebration and elegy. Through his lens, we see the homelands, the toils, faiths, loves, joys, and aspirations of the ethnic people. These pulsating images express a heartfelt concern and hope. That maybe, through an appreciation of the human landscape – these Faraway Faces – we may come to better understand and measure our loss.