ChinaFile Presents: 'Ground Up: China on the Margins'

Join us for an evening of photos and discussion with photojournalist Sim Chi Yin in conversation with David M. Barreda, visuals editor of ChinaFile.

Chi Yin will show some of her work documenting Chinese society. From rural petitioners demanding justice to migrants living in Beijing’s basements to gold miners waiting for death in the remote mountains, Chi Yin accesses communities on the fringes of Chinese society and then takes an intimate, close-up photographic process to tell their stories.

A fourth-generation overseas Chinese who was born and grew up in Singapore, Chi Yin moved to the mainland seven years ago, where she now works as a New York Times-accredited photographer. She also takes photographs for a variety of publications, including TIME magazine, The New Yorker, Businessweek, and Le Monde. She is also working on several personal projects and cutting her first documentary film.

Chi Yin will talk about the personal story she is working on: how her paternal grandfather — a journalist and community leader — was deported from British Malaya to China, joined the Chinese Communist Party guerrilla army, and was executed just before the Communist victory in 1949.

This event will be held at Open Society Foundations on West 57th Street.