Lu Guang. Black Gold and China

The Chinese photographer Lu Guang occupies himself with the socioeconomic and ecological issues connected with China’s "industrial revolution", which call to mind the problems of Western nations in the nineteenth and twentieth century. His photographs reflect the consequences of intensive coalmining and the environmental destruction that accompanies it. They impressively document the collateral damage that China’s emergence as an economic superpower and producer for the international demand has caused. Lu Guang also captures the social life worlds of people who live on the poverty line in these industrial landscapes in powerful pictures. The catalogue accompanying his first monographic exhibition in Germany presents roughly 100 works with which Lu Guang makes us aware that: "There is only one earth, which we share."