I just got back from a trip to China for the Lishui International Photography Festival. I'd been invited to curate a documentary portraiture exhibition, so I went to assist with the installation and attend the opening. The event is amazing. It's a city-wide photography extravaganza: exhibitions, lectures, seminars, and photo ops abound. They even had dancing dragons and special-effects smoke at the opening ceremony (we might need to up our game at Photolucida).

I decided to focus my image selections on Critical Mass finalists and Top 50 artists from the last few years. Photolucida's CM archives are bursting with incredible talent, so I had rich resources to draw from. The resulting exhibition, entitled "Violence, Resilience, and the Human Spirit," included striking works by Leslie Alsheimer, Noah David Bau, Ben Brody, Claudio Cambon, Calvin Chen, Kirk Crippens, Scott Dalton, Natan Dvir, Alinka Echeverria, Gloria Baker Feinstein, Michelle Frankfurter, Patricia Galagan, Matthew Goddard-Jones, Carlos Gonzalez, Toni Greaves, Tamsin Green, Satu Haavisto, Deborah Hamon, Lucia Herrero, Stella Johnson, Corinna Kern, Meeri Koutaniemi, Ikuru Kuwajima, Alvaro Laiz, Jimmy Lam, Gloriann Liu, Rania Matar, David Pace, Ohm Phanphiroj, Walker Pickering, Jessica Eve Rattner, Reiner Riedler, Gilles Roudiere, Maureen Ruddy Burkhart, Michelle Sank, Alix Smith, Jeffrey Stockbridge, Ilona Szwarc, Iveta Vaivode, Xiaoxiao Xu, and Ji Yeo.

Here's a little video of the opening ceremony. The pomp! The circumstance! It was such a treat. Take a look: