168 pages | 80 images
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston | Yale University Press
By Anne Wilkes Tucker

For over forty years, Chen Changfen photographed the Great Wall amidst the dramatic and changing landscape. His photographs can appear both timeless and filled with energy, reflecting Chen’s belief that the Wall is endowed with meaning through the laborers who died making it and the people who live beside it. One of Chen’s photographs depicts a character from a plaque at a famous gate on the Wall that reads, “The first pass under heaven.” I suggested opening the book with this character, which means “passageway”; Chen loved the idea and offered to create the calligraphy himself. The cover image is a single wrapped photograph that begins at the front end leaf, continues to the front cover, spine and back, and ends on the back end leaf. Each section becomes an independent composition like the wall itself in Chen’s images.