This body of work examines time and memory through archival photographs of Chinese landscapes made by a young British student traveling across the country in the late 1980s. Reconstructed through layers and chromatic shifts, the images explore the persistence of place after periods of historical transformation.

The photographs foreground landscape at a transitional moment in China’s modern history, before the large-scale urbanization and infrastructural expansion that would define the following decades. Human presence is minimal, allowing geography and scale to shape the visual narrative.

Travel during this period unfolded slowly and unpredictably. Some journeys lasted days, including a continuous train ride from Beijing to Kunming without sleeping accommodations. Many of the photographs were taken from train windows.

In the reworked images, landscapes overlap and repeat through digital processes, reflecting the fragmented nature of memory. Memory persists imperfectly in recollection, existing somewhere between reality and imagination.

About The Photographs

The original photos used in this work belong to Bill Austin, a student from the U.K. who was studying at Beijing University in the late 1980s. He returned to Newcastle to complete his undergraduate degree before traveling back to China in 1989 to teach English. He later worked as a freelance journalist for news agencies including Reuters and The Wall Street Journal, before joining Kyodo News as a staff correspondent. Austin joined Bloomberg in Hong Kong, helping expand its news operations across China, South Korea and Japan over two decades.

More of Austin’s original photographs from China can be found on Instagram at @china1987project.