A Chinese witness to history: Pulitzer Prize winner on 40 years photographing China and USSR
- ‘I was there ... until all hell had broken loose’, Hong Kong-born Liu Heung Shing says of covering Tiananmen Square in 1989, one of many big moments he shot
- Over the course of a 40-year career he also captured telling images of daily life as China moved from Mao to modernity and communism ended in Russia
As a photojournalist who covered China for over 40 years, Liu Heung Shing has unique insights into how its people think, and the way foreigners perceive the country. His powerful pictures challenge stereotypes and get below its surface.
From young Chinese couples disco dancing, to a man outside Beijing’s Forbidden City holding out a Coca-Cola bottle after the drink was reintroduced to the market in 1981, the poignancy is there for all to see.
Liu, who was born in 1951 in the then British colony of Hong Kong but spent his early years living in mainland China with his mother, worked as a news photographer for several Western media organisations, including Time, Life and the Associated Press news agency.
His coverage of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy student protests in 1989 included images of the violent June 4 crackdown but also, before that, rock bands playing, the Democracy Wall where citizens put up big-character posters protesting about political and social issues, and exhausted protesters asleep among a sea of banners.
