Howard French’s Disappearing Shanghai: Photographs and Poems of an Intimate Way of Life

Never let it be said that this blog only promotes books by Paul French – we are today also plugging a book by Howard French (no relation, except probably in that Genghis Khan shared gene way), the well known and veteran correspondent in Shanghai and photographer – Disappearing Shanghai. I just got a copy of his new book of Shanghai photographs for Christmas from a (now very, very) good friend and it is excellent. Anyone who spent any time in the city in the last 20 years and got out of the ex-pat skinny white coffees/almond croissant clusters of Anfu Lu, and other such nonsense, will find this collection of images a veritable Proust’s madeleine of a book. To help that process, novelist Qiu Xiaolong, who with his Inspector Chen novels has done more than anyone to capture the flavour and style of ordinary Shanghai in the 1990s (which seems light years ago now back when an almond croissant on Anfu Lu was about as likely as cheese arriving from the moon!), has added poems and essays throughout. An excellent way to spend the holidays drifting through this collection….and Ian Johnson’s comment about how this collection moves us on from the peasant in front of an LV store, beggar-next-to-Rolls Royce images we’ve been inundated with for years now and hopefully all rather tired of is spot on!

This book is a photographic exploration of life in the old and rapidly disappearing quarters of Shanghai, with accompanying poems and essays by the author of fiction and poetry, Qiu Xiaolong.

The photographs, all taken in a documentary style over a period of five years, represent an intimate and invaluable visual natural history of a way of life in the workers quarters and other central districts of the city that held sway throughout the 20th century and into the early years of the 21st century, before yielding to the ambitious ongoing efforts at urban reconstruction.

Mr. Qiu, whose best-known books are largely set in this old city, where his protagonist Inspector Chen walks around in investigations, is suited like few others to provide a lyrical accompanying text whose purpose is to celebrate the life, beauty and texture of this world before it has vanished altogether.

No photographer has pursued this subject with more dedication and persistence than Mr. French, whose photographs of Shanghai have been exhibited on four continents. Taken together, the work of these two contributors offers compelling esthetics and lasting historical value for lovers of Shanghai, past, present and future.