Snapping the Dragon

China’s evolution, through Hoffmann’s camera.

In 1994, after having worked his way through a crab processing ship in Alaska, art school, a series of photography workshops and a string of newspaper jobs, Fritz Hoffmann arrived in China. That was before the world’s most populous nation became fashionable for newsmen.

Sitting at Kolkata’s Studio Pomegranate, the crisp autumn sun cutting across his face, Hoffmann speaks of the days when he was the only foreign photographer in the country. “This was the China before the Internet, the cellphones and Starbucks. It was a different time,” says the man who has, over the years, photographically documented China’s evolution — its growing economy and emerging society. “It was incredible, but it was very difficult to work in China. It was very restricted for the media, and that was the biggest challenge,” says Hoffmann, whose photographs have been published widely — and appear frequently in the National Geographic magazine — as part of China’s modern discourse.

This is his first visit to Kolkata. He’s here to conduct a photography workshop during Durga Puja, and present his work during a seminar. So, did it prompt a comparison? “From one perspective, it feels like how China was 20 years ago. But India, on the surface, feels very open,” he says.

Hoffmann, previously based in Shanghai for 13 years, was the first photographer to receive official accreditation to reside outside Beijing since 1949. And this allowed him to travel widely across the country as it hurtled down the path of accelerated economic growth.

Like many others, Hoffmann confesses that his subject for a decade-and-a-half is walking the knife-edge. “The social blueprint is difficult to handle, compared to the economic or infrastructural. It is difficult to think that China can continue with this change,” he says. Kolkata, on the other hand, surprises him with its appearance — “that people live hand in hand with class divisions”.

Coming from a chronicler who has spent most of his life capturing people and progress, this is a compliment that the City of Joy can accept, despite its own distinct Communist legacy.