No Western photographer is as intimately acquainted with China as Yann Layma, who spent nearly half of his twenty-year career working there. Layma’s reportage of this vast country is extraordinarily complete: he portrays city and country, traditional customs and the shock of modernity, and every aspect of public and private life. His style is personal and poetic, and he is alive to nuances of gesture and expression. From the classical architecture of the Great Wall to the skyscrapers of up-to-the minute Shanghai, he captures the essence of one of the world’s great nations.

With an introduction by Layma and five essays by highly regarded writers—including Da Sijie, author of the celebrated novel Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress—this smaller, giftable edition of China will be a wonderful introduction to this fascinating country, filled with illuminating juxtapositions of old and new.