1980 is the beginning of China’s economic reforming and opening up. Leroy
W. Demery, Jr. , an 27 years old American, decided to cross the ocean and
check out the mystery east. His first stop is HongKong. During the time in
HK, the tour guide asked him if he’d like to spend an afternoon in a place
next to HK but across the sea. And he said “YES”. The place he went to is
Sheng Zhen, the first city to start reform and open up in China in 1979.

Leroy recorded the original ShenZheng in the last minute, before all these
got replaced by factories. He came to China again in 1983, visited a lot of
other cities and recorded all of them. I am kind of curious why this old
country pick this young man from the west to record how this land looks like
before everything totally changed, but I am really glad to get to see these
treasure images today. Not only me, same as a lot of people. Leroy start
to put these photos on flickr since Dec,2008 and attract tons of viewers.
Among these viewers, there is a curator of ShenZhen & HongKong architecture
biannual, and the result is these photos will be exhibited in the show.

Check them out now on Leroy W. Demery, Jr.’s flickr album.

http://flickr.com/photos/lwdemery/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gedawei/collections/

via Julia Liu of W+K Shanghai