Between 1985 and 2008, I spent large parts of my life in Guizhou, one of the most remote and abandoned provinces of China, sharing for about 18 years the everyday life of the Miao tribes.
Year after year, the travel permits delivered by the local authorities helped me to get my own path as a photographer among a world still ordered by the ancestor rules and calendar.
Today the photographs taken those years become records of a vanished world.
For years, the Miao left their villages and joined the huge wave of the rural migrants searching for job into the rising big cities. The ancient traditional villages become theme parks where traditions are amusement for tourists, where the beautiful surroundings serve as nice backgrounds for nice selfies. Guizhou Province infrastructures are definitely involved into the China development challenge.
All those photographs capture the vanishing world of human beings trapped into the last China revolution towards modernity.
Philippe Fatin
