Home Front cover PHOTO ESSAYS LIFE FORCE
The magazine of the photo-essay
Sept 2016 back issue
by Wolfgang Muller
A free, really high quality photo-essay magazine.  Fabulous! Stephen Fry. British actor, writer and film & documentary maker
Mingong The Pursuit of Happiness Back to menu
Around 200 million migrant workers, called Mingong in Chinese, have moved from poor rural regions to China’s industrial and urban centres. Between 2005 and 2011, Wolfgang Müller followed some of them in their private and work lives. The pictures capture the scope of China’s domestic migration as well as the everyday reality it entails. Against the backdrop of harsh living conditions, the images present intimate portraits of the struggles and dreams of individual workers.
Window cleaner Zhang Wei, 39 and colleagues. Beijing, 2010.
Trash recycler, Xu Fang, 24. Beijing, 2009.
Rooming House. Textile worker Yan Zhen, 19. Nanjing, 2011.
Textile worker at sewing machine. Nanjing, 2011.
Residential block. Shenzhen, 2009.
Housing at a scrapyard. Beijing, 2009.
Workers in basement rooms inside a high-rise building construction site. 2005.
Growing up at a scrapyard. Beijing, 2009.
Basement rooms of a high-rise building construction site. 2007.
Trash recycler, Xu Fang on train ride back to her parents that she once escaped from. 2011.
Workers leaving the factory. Nanjing, 2011.
Construction workers. Beijing, 2007.
Garbage collectors Li Chen, 33 and Zhou Dong, 40. Beijing, 2010.
Taxi trip to karaoke club. Toy factory workers Li Meiju, 18 and Tan Yaru, 20. Shenzhen, 2009.
Chongqing, 2010.
Hostess Wang Xiuxiu, 21. Dongguan, 2011.
Homeless people. Guangzhou, 2009.
Hostess Wang Xiuxiu, 21. Dongguan, 2011.
Hostess Xiao Feng, 24. Dongguan, 2011.
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