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| © Michael Christopher Brown |
| A family waits in line on Hong Kong Island to get visas for the China mainland. Click photo for more images. |
Age: 29
Location: New York City
Website: mcbphotos.com
"In China, I was really trying to break free of everything I had learned and go in a different direction. I found a new world."
As a freelance editorial and commercial photographer, Michael Christopher Brown has shot on assignment for The New York Times, Fortune, National Geographic, The Economist, and other publications. But one of his favorite photo projects, shot in China in 2005 and 2006, was self-generated.
"I have a few friends over there, and the first time I went was to visit them," Brown recalls. "I was blown away by the place, so I went back to shoot more. I made a group of pictures that documented my own experiences -- exploring the culture with my camera. It was a way to get out of my world and into theirs."
Traveling with a limited knowledge of Mandarin, Brown says he was met with both bewilderment and warmth. "For many of them -- except in larger cities like Shanghai -- they had never seen a white person before, and they looked at me like I was an alien," he says. "The camera sometimes took them by surprise, because I was doing street photography, and they were more likely to have seen a camera used for landscapes, or maybe formal portraits. But I was well received, and people were generous."
Using Canon digital SLRs and a detail-oriented, documentary style, Brown has created photo essays in such locales as his adopted city of New York; Russia's Sakhalin Island; Orlando, Florida (for a Geographic story called Plastic Land); and the coast of Alabama in the wake of Hurricane Ivan. Speaking while on a Geographic assignment in the Northwest Canadian wilderness, Brown said he loves a new adventure -- and none more than his travels in China. "It's a place that you can't explain, even if you try," he says. "In China, I was really trying to break free of everything I had learned and go in a different direction. I found a whole new world. It's definitely something I want to go back to."
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