Photo Exhibition "Slowly Down the River:The Last Days of the Ancient Three Gorges"
Summary:
FCCJ Main Bar & Sushi Bar
August 3 - August 30, 2008
Yasuhiro Ogawa
In 1993, in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, construction began on the Three Gorges Dam. Scheduled for completion in 2009 it will be the largest hydroelectric dam in the world, and with a planned capacity of 18.2 million kilowatts it is an evocative symbol of national pride and rising Chinese power.
The dam has long been the subject of heated controversy, not least concerning the forced relocation of local residents. Numerous towns and communes along the river are already submerged under the dam waters, and at least 1.3 million people have been displaced. The filling in of the dam began in 2003, creating a large reservoir in a scenic area once beloved by famous poets such as Du Fu and Li Bai.
While taking these photos, I wandered from place to place, a passenger on the slow boats which run along the river. On those journeys I saw thousands of faces; faces of Chinese people carried along by the strong swift current of modernization and economic growth.
Yasuhiro Ogawa
Yaushiro Ogawa was born in 1968, in Kanagawa, Japan. He started to take pictures at the age of 24 and held his first exhibition, "Hutashika-na-Chizu", at the Ginza Kodak Photo Salon in 1999. The following year that exhibition won the 37th Taiyo Award. Since then, his work has appeared in many publications in Japan. This photo story was nominated for the 2006 Oskar Barnack Award (Leica France).
The Exhibition Committee
