After a couple weeks in Xinjiang without internet, I’m now in Gansu Province for the Lunar New Year Holiday. I’ll have more to show soon.

Just a reminder that a print of Duwei (above) from the China Punk story is up for bid in the Daniel Cooney/iGavel Emerging Artists Auction until Feb. 4. Get it while the gettin’s good.

After a whirlwind shoot in Shanghai yesterday, I’m leaving today for a few weeks to far western China to pursue some personal projects. Internet connection will be a problem for much of the trip, so please contact me by phone at +86-13770324102. I intend to photograph a few stories including: Tibetan New Year, snow in Xinjiang, development in Xinjiang, a Hui minority wedding, and other subjects. When I return, keep watching dvafoto for pictures. Editors, let me know if you need any pictures.

I highly recommend giving 10 minutes to this video interview and presentation of Nadav Kander’s Prix Prictet-winning project Yangtze, The Long River.

This is the most beautiful, smart and inspiring project I have seen in a long time. Go to the Prix Prictet site or Kander’s own for a better look at the pictures themselves.

(duckrabbit posted the video over a week ago and today I found time to enjoy it, and had to pass it along)

Four of my images (above) from the series Young and Abandoned, portraits of orphans on the verge of institutionalization in rural Jiangsu Province, China, will be included in an exhibition at Fe艺术iv’Art (Feztiv Art) in Shanghai, China, from January 22-26th, 2010. There is an opening on January 22 at 6:30 pm. I’ll be there.

The festival was created by the Artdidact, the Artistic Commission of the French Junior Chamber International of Shanghai, whose aim is “to take part and contribute to the progress of the global community by giving to the young the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, their social responsibility and the necessary solidarity for taking actions to produce positive changes. Members of the JCI identify and realize projects to serve the positive evolution of their city in all fields: arts, social, economics, cultural, community…”

The subject of the exhibition is “China Youth,” and the pictures will be on display at Art + Shanghai Gallery at Fumin Lu, Lane 22, House 2, (Near Yanan Lu). Phone: +86-21 6248 4388. In the off-chance that someone in Shanghai is reading this, I hope to see you there.

Lu Guang won this year’s W. Eugene Smith Grant for Humanistic Photography with his work documenting pollution in China. The pictures are astounding. In an interview with China’s NetEase, Lu Guang discusses how he funded the project, how he found out about the subjects he photographed, and how he has built a network of people all over the country who keep him up to date with pollution in their areas. Thankfully, China Hush has a translation of the interview.

I’ve returned to China after a successful round of editor meetings in New York. In Jiangsu Province, at the moment, but quickly will be en route to Sichuan Province. Facebook remains blocked by the Great Firewall. I can be reached by email: scott.brauer@gmail.com, by skype: m.scott.brauer, or by phone: +86-13770324102 or +1 (917) 512-3473.

Hopefully I return to regular posting here on dvafoto. I’ve got a number of posts planned, from photobombs to cropping as lying to meeting with editors in NYC to photography that’s recently inspired me to some excerpts from my own recent work.

As always, drop a line if you’ve got something interesting to share. Our audience here is growing.

Sorry for the absence of posts here.  Haven’t had reliable internet access for the better part of a month.  Here are a few pictures from the past couple of weeks along with a promise to return to regular posting on dvafoto. I’m currently in northern Montana, and I can be reached by phone at +1-917-512-3473.

I’ve recently completed a body of work on China’s domestic consumer market. Long dormant, recent years have shown the billion or so potential consumers make an attractive target for the companies throughout the world. Coca-Cola knew this early on, but now companies such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Mercedes-Benz, H&M, Louis Vitton, Pizza Hut, and any other brand you know have opened shops in major urban centers in China.

Politicians in Beijing have been downplaying the severity of China’s share of the global economic crisis. Outlooks remain optimistic and, thanks in part to half-trillion-dollar stimulus plans, the country’s economic growth has not declined as rapidly as some had predicted. Through tax incentives, government-provided shopping vouchers, a lowering Consumer Price Index, and a nationwide “Buy China” movement, consumer spending in China has remained strong throughout recent months and is expected to grow in the near future. While many doubt that the country’s domestic market will bring swift respite to the world’s economies, evidence suggests it has done much to soften the blow to China’s bottom line.

More work from the series can be seen on my website, “Hao shaoxi, hao shaoxi: China’s domestic consumer market”.

The New York Times Lens Blog has just published a heretofore unknown picture of the Tank Man from the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. AP reporter Terril Jones had been covering the demonstrations and snapped a picture of the famous confrontation between an unknown man and a line of tanks. The Lens blog has more details. I am quite surprised Jones had shown the picture only to friends previously.

Lens also interviewed 4 photographers who each got the iconic shot: Charlie Cole, Stuart Franklin, Jeff Widener, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah. This is not to be missed; great behind-the-scenes stories about the shooting conditions and the difficulty of getting the pictures out (involving toilets and poorly-dressed hippies!). Youtube has video of the confrontation and the PBS Frontline documentary Tank Man explores contemporary Chinese perspectives on the famous photo.

James Fallows reports about his experience in Tiananmen Square the night before the 20th Anniversary this week and his wife’s the day of and Shanghaiist has video of plainclothes police interrupting international news reports with, of all things, umbrellas.

Meanwhile, BagNewsNotes has a dispatch from Alan Chin in Beijing on the Anniversary, ChinaBeat has a ton of contemporary and historical reporting on the 1989 events, and there’s plenty more. DanWei’s must-read China news is another great place for a variety of reporting and remembrance; I can’t link to search results, so you’ll just have to type in the words yourself. And here’s a couple of stories about information about 1989 slipping past China’s censors in the past couple of years. Magnum’s also got a small but interesting edit of a number of photographers’ pictures from Tiananmen.

Meanwhile, further south, it’s been a couple of days just like all others.