My projects are visual narratives gathered over extended periods of time and influenced greatly by my deep interest in social, political and environmental issues, with a particular emphasis on China.
My series Qi Lihe is an intensely intimate portrait of life within one district on the outskirts of Lanzhou city in Gansu Province, North Western China. The images depict scenes of daily life for thousands of Muslim migrants who have been forced to leave their ancestral homes within the Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture and migrate to the provincial capital, in order to survive. Desertification has destroyed their farmlands and they are effectively environmental refugees living on the edge of society, struggling to survive from one day to the next. My images intricately weave in and out of people’s homes and through the urban landscape of Qi Lihe, documenting the daily reality of living and working in this environment; an existence so far removed from their previous lives. Through this series I intend to bring to the surface, a community and a situation of which the mass media does not speak.
Stephen Kelly
Age: 28 Nationality: English Place of Residence: London, England
