During the 1960s, heavy industry and military factories were moved from North-eastern China to the remote South-western frontiers in order to strengthen China’s national defense. Millions of migrant workers followed the factories on the Third Front. But with time changing, these factories got abandoned gradually from the beginning of the 80’s due to China’s reform and opening policy.

Chen Jiagang, a former architect, businessman, and curator has taken the Third Front as the subject matter of his first body of works, using photography as his means of capturing the specters of industry that still reside there, silently.

His sumptuous pictures tell us the story of these cities which were, at a time, the incarnation of the social idealism, the glory of the country and, which have become nowadays, useless industrial cemeteries and endless wastelands. In a country experiencing at present one of the highest rates of development in the world, Chen Jiagang queries the usefulness, or absurdity of the mad development race that Human Beings have been pursuing for decades