In the final galleries of 2016, the publishing juggernaut Tencent again shows its leadership in the documentary photography space, but iFeng’s choice to publish a personal photo gallery by Zhou Xin is also worth a good look, especially since personal photo essays are rare in China’s documentary space.
This story of Chen Yi’s struggle begins, she says, after her husband physically abused and cheated on her, and she filed for divorce. Nearly a month later, on February 10, 2016, nine strange men showed up at her apartment and snatched her son, and she has not seen him since. Yet local police refused to open a case, calling the kidnapping a “domestic dispute” and telling the couple to resolve the matter themselves. Chen’s plight is not uncommon. In this gallery, photographer Liao Lulu follows six women who allege their children were taken away by their fathers in connection with a divorce.
Photographer Che Yicen follows a Tibetan country doctor, Norbu, in Penggang village, 65 miles west of Lhasa, high on the Tibetan plateau. The 50-year-old doctor runs a clinic for 370 villagers out of his home, and he regularly makes house calls, especially to the elderly and to pregnant women who are not able to travel. Norbu often travels as much as three hours by horse to see patients. Commissioned by Tencent Charity—a platform that helps NGOs to fundraise, especially through donations of small amounts—as of early January, this story had raised some U.S.$70,000 to benefit the Tibet Autonomous Region Maternal and Pediatric Health Association to fund the training of more country doctors like Norbu.
As Depth of Field previously reported, the online celebrity ecosystem is incredibly popular in China. This month, Tencent pulls back the curtain on the industry.
In 1995, 20-year-old Nie Shubin was sentenced to death and executed for the rape and murder of a woman in his native Hebei. In 2005, another man confessed to the crime, and Nie’s case became a rallying cry for lawyers and other advocates pushing for criminal justice reform in China, where more than 99 percent of those tried for crimes are convicted. Early last December, nearly two decades after Nie’s execution, the Supreme Court of China overturned his conviction, revealing deep flaws in the country’s justice system. In the above photo, Nie’s father embraces Chu Yang, a journalist from Henan Business Daily, who was one of the first to write about the possibility of Nie’s wrongful conviction.
Since becoming pregnant with her second child in 2014, Zhou Xin has documented her family life. Last year, China’s government abandoned its rules limiting families to one child. Zhou’s choice to document her own family is still a rarity in Chinese documentary photography.