Chongqing - City of ambition

The Chinese city of Chongqing is little known in the West. Yet with its 32 million inhabitants, the city is twice as big as the Netherlands. Located on the Yangtze river in the province of Sichuan in southwestern China, it is one of China’s most rapidly growing cities. 

Ferit Kuyas stayed in Chongqing on dozens of occasions for long periods and became totally fascinated by the megalomaniacal construction fervour he witnessed there, as well as its beauty. The almost ubiquitous haze – naturally present in this region but intensified by large-scale pollution –  gave his work almost automatically an added layer of mystery.

Kuyas focussed predominantly on the periphery of the city, where the enormity of it cannot be directly seen, but rather felt. The result is a stifling and exceptional book that displays all the superlatives that describe China: huge, unstoppable, terrifying, incomprehensible, fascinating, beautiful...

Ferit Kuyas (Istanbul, 1955) lives in Wädenswil, Switzerland. He studied architecture and law in Zurich before devoting himself fully to photography in 1986. His work has been exhibited frequently all over the world, most recently in London and in Lódz.

Texts by Diana Edkins & Bill Kouwenhoven
Design: MV LevievanderMeer, Amsterdam

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