About Charlotte Temple

Charlotte Temple started her work in China almost thirty years ago. The country had begun to enter the modern era, and it was clear that change would be rapid. It was also clear that it would be uneven. At that time in the mid-80’s Shanghai or Beijing might have been somewhat modern, but traveling a hundred miles west would take her back in time, perhaps to a place as it had been a hundred years ago. A journey of a thousand miles into the interior would often bring her into cultures living much as they had a thousand years ago. Fascinated by the beauty and the contradictions of this country, she began her photographic project to document both the present and the disappearing which she continues today.

This project has taken her to the remote corners of China, where she continues documenting tribal life and the many cultures of both the majority Han Chinese and its fifty-two minorities.  Change comes comes ever faster to China, and the work becomes more pressing with the incursions of freeways, fast trains, and ever better communications.

Charlotte graduated with an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. While much of her archive is in medium format film, her work for the last decade has been digital. She prints her work using archival ultrachrome inks on a variety of fine art papers.