Barbara Klemm’s photographs of China take us into a particular moment of profound change. In 1985, the country was still deeply shaped by the Mao era, while Deng Xiaoping’s policy of “reform and opening up” had already set far-reaching transformation in motion.
Klemm’s gaze is not directed at major political events, but at people and their everyday lives: at fields and markets, factories and homes, at work, food, and rare moments of quiet. The result is a compelling portrait of a society caught between past and future.More than forty years later, her photographs show a China that no longer exists in this form – while at the same time preserving the moment in which the country’s present-day reality began to take shape.

Barbara Klemm is considered one of the most important contemporary German photographers. She was born in 1939 in Münster and raised in Karlsruhe. She has worked for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung since 1959 and became the newspaper’s editorial photographer for politics and culture in 1970. Barbara Klemm received numerous awards for her work, including the Dr. Erich Salomon Prize of the German Photographic Society (1989), the Hugo Erfurth Prize of the City of Leverkusen (1989), the Maria Sibylla Merian Prize (1998), the Hessian Cultural Prize (2000) and the Max Beckmann Prize of the City of Frankfurt (2009). Barbara Klemm was the first woman to have received the Leica Hall of Fame Award (2012). Since 1992 Barbara Klemm is a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts; in 2010 she was elected as a member of the Order “Pour le Mérite”. Barbara Klemm lives in Frankfurt am Main.