The new world

I was very impressed with a previous photo book (Gotham city, also published by Damiani) by Campigotto where he captured the dazzle of New York by night, he continues the theme with forty remarkable photos of China, new and old. The book's large landscape size makes the pictures more than twelve inches wide and the printing with a three hundred screen allows the detail to jump off the page.
The first ten photos are called Iconic past with the Great Wall, Terracotta Army at Xi An, Shaanxi province and the Li River including a beautiful bird's-eye view (the only photo over a spread) of the river winding its way through the countryside and mountains, the detail is clear enough to see two towns and other houses plus boats on the river. 

Iconic present is Campigotto at his best, capturing cities at night: Beijing; Chongqing; Hong Kong; Shanghai. He has included the cloudless sky in several shots which I assume were taken just after dusk creating a mix of almost pastel red, orange and blue halos around commercial buildings. Hong Kong in particular with dozens of high-rise blocks must give off a huge amount of light and a couple of time-lapse photos looking down on the city create roads of molten orange. The architecture of the offices has an Asian look rather than north American and the Chinese seem keen on having well lit top floor structures that look like they've been tacked onto the rest of the building. 

Campigotto's photos capture a modern, thriving China (now the second most powerful country in the world) but also a country with an extraordinary  past.