China Between by Polly Braden
These images are from the book China Between due to be published with Dewi Lewis in April 2010. The book is the culmination of over a decade photographing across China. In fact it was in the mid-1990s while she was living in the town of Yangzhou (where Mao was born) that Polly first took up photography. Making sense of the camera and making sense of China seemed to go hand in hand. Since then she has amassed a huge archive of images, some made on assignment for magazines but most made speculatively. Although there have been plenty of great shots along the way China Between is not the result of cherry picking. No, it has taken most of those years to find the right photographic approach and the majority of images here were made in the last three years. What she was trying to discover, without fully knowing it for a long while, was a form of observing, shooting and editing that might express the complicated relation between everyday life in China’s burgeoning cities and the great transformations that have been taking place there.

Artist Statement by Polly Braden

Polly Braden is a photographer currently based in London. She works on long-term, self-initiated projects, as well as commissions for international publications. Her imagery is marked by an interest in the relationship between work, culture and economics. In the last year she has collaborated with journalists to produce extended photo-essays in the Middle East, China, Kenya and the UK. Her photography has appeared in The Guardian, The Saturday Telegraph magazine, Foto8, ICON, Photoworks, Frieze magazine, The Sydney Morning Herald, D Magazine (Italy).

Recent commissions have come from UBS Bank with the London Symphony Orchestra, Tate Modern, the Barbican, Grizedale Arts, Frieze Art Fair, the National Health Service (UK) and The Arts Councils of Scotland and Wales. During the summer of 2009 on a residency in Kunming and also in 2007 whilst on an artist residency with the CEAC (Chinese European Art Centre) in Xiamen, China she worked on new body of work. This will culminate in the book China Between to be published by Dewi Lewis in April 2010.

She taught photography at London College of Communication between 2005 and 2007. She is a winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize (2003),The Guardian Newspaper Young Photographer of the Year (2002) and The Magenta Foundation’s Emerging Photographers prize (2007). Polly Braden has exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (USA) Impressions Gallery (York, England), Stills Gallery (Scotland)