Family Stuff, a photojournalism project by Beijing-based photographers Huang Quingjun and Ma Hongjie, has been circulating among blogs for a couple of years now. We came across it recently and wanted to share the work. Huang and Ma juxtapose the results of China’s economic progress with its enduring poverty – often in the same household – by documenting families and their belongings arranged outside of their homes.
     The photographers capture Chinese families from various regions and ethnicities. Ma in particular focuses on the country’s rural majority, rather than the urban population more frequently displayed by the media. While to first-world eyes the number of possessions appears scant, their owners are obviously proud of what they’ve gained in recent times. Occasionally, too, other faces are more troubled, as seen in the expressions of a family in the resettlement program in Beijing, waiting to move to a new home so their old residence can be demolished.
     Huang and Ma work completely independently of one another: Huang covers the Northern half of China while Ma documents the South. The shoots can take months to finish. Although families are compensated for their trouble, the task of explaining the project and convincing families to so nakedly display themselves and their possession often proves difficult. Six years in the making, this epic project will result next year in fifty photos and a book.