Lu Guang, a freelance photographer, shares his experiences and tells stories about taking photos over the last decade to fans in Beijing on December 20. Photo: CFP

A café in a downtown area of Beijing was packed with people on December 20.

In a dark room, a slide show of photos taken in Henan villages hit hard by AIDS was on display. The dark-toned photos cast a shadow of despair: In a squalid house lay a dying villager who was infected with AIDS. People attended a funeral for a child who had died of AIDS.

Sadness fell over the audience. Some sobbed while others cleared their throats.

Independent photographer Lu Guang sat at one end of the room, carefully reading people's facial expressions. "I want to touch people by photographing the dark side of society," Lu, 51, told the Global Times.

Lu has earned international fame by risking his life in his battle to record humanity's other side, including drug addiction along the China-Myanmar border, AIDS-stricken villages in Henan Province, the environmental impact of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, and industrial pollution along the Yellow River.

The camera is his only weapon. "I realized the power of the image, and I felt obligated to tell people what is going on. Many bad things have been covered," Lu said.

Not affiliated with any media or social organization, Lu works independently. He makes ends meet with the income from the photography studio he runs with a friend to support his real passion, which burns brightly.

Lu was awarded the World Press Photo prize in 2004 for his images of AIDS patients in Henan, and he received a $30,000 grant in 2009 from the W Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, which promotes humanistic photography. He also became the first photographer from China to be invited by the US State Department as a visiting scholar in 2005.

Lu also pays a price for his choice of subject matter. Local officials have hunted him down, beat him and locked him in dark rooms. He has to be very careful when handling sensitive topics to avoid risking his life.

Lu explained that reflecting social problems and pushing for change during an era of transition in China are the goals of his work. "It is my duty to show the dark side of society at the hand of local governments, so that citizens and the central government are aware of it, and can then do something to change it," Lu said.

Passion for the lens

Born in 1961, Lu fell in love with photography in 1980, when he held a camera for the first time. The young man was then working at a local factory in his hometown in Yongkang county, Zhejiang Province.

Lu opened a photography studio in the early 1990s, and within a few years, he had a good business going. Despite this early success, he regretted not having been formally trained in the craft, and eventually he decided to leave his lucrative business behind and enrolled at the Academy of Arts & Design of Tsinghua University (formerly the Central Academy of Arts & Design). He attended the school from 1993 to 1995, where he learned to harness the power of an image.

In 1994, he learned that a large number of people were taking huge risks to go west to dig gold. Lu was immediately drawn to the story. "Going west means danger, not to mention they would be digging gold," Lu said.

That summer, he jumped into a truck and joined a gold-digging team headed west, having no idea what their actual destination was. After traveling for more than eight days, Lu and his companions stopped at a gold mine in northwestern Tibet.

Lu was shocked at the damage that the gold mines had brought to the plateau. Gold mines ran along the grasslands like scars on the landscape. He closely followed workers for months and took photos that captured their challenging lives and how they blended with the grassland landscape and local herdsmen.

The release of the photos met with a strong response from the public. People criticized the local government for allowing the mining industry to destroy the environment, and local officials were forced to promise they would close the mines within years.

Lu was relieved when he read in the newspaper that the Tibetan authority had banned gold mining in January 2006. "It gives me hope, because I see the changes that I can bring to the place and the people I took photos of," he said.

Trouble in the grasslands

Lu has spent the last decade documenting environmental disasters caused by rapid economic growth, focusing mostly on pollution.

Recently, he completed shooting a series of photos on the pollution caused by coal mines in Inner Mongolia. Lu traveled to seven cities in Inner Mongolia to document the environmental effects of the burgeoning coal mining industry, which the local authority has been expanding in order to develop the local economy.

"The over-exploitation of coal resources has resulted in an ecological disaster. Water sources have dried up, grass no longer grows and there is severe desertification. Herdsmen have had to leave their homes," Lu said.

Not surprisingly, local authorities were not pleased. A local publicity official warned Lu not to rent a helicopter for aerial photos in August.

"I am not afraid of being hunted down or being confronted by the local government, but I want to complete my work," Lu said.

The photographer knows from experience to be wary when he gets an invitation from local authorities to "have a cup of tea."

He has been hunted down by local governments in the past, and he was locked in a dark room for three hours during his AIDS project. He was beaten by a group of people from a local factory along the Yellow River when he was photographing a pipe discharging wastewater from the factory. He even mingled with drug users in Yunnan, risking his health to quell their suspicions about him as a newcomer.

Judgment of his peers

"I was moved by his dedication to his work," Sun Qingwei, an environmental protection researcher with Greenpeace who followed Lu on his recent adventure in Inner Mongolia, told the Global Times. Sun said that Lu climbed a 10-meter-high trash heap to snap a bird's-eye view of the mine.

Among his peers, Lu is a controversial figure. Some photographers have accused him of sensationalizing the dark side of his country to gain personal fame. Others say he is blindly motivated to win prizes and awards and that he has even had his subjects pose artificially. Lu discussed his critics in a self-assured tone.

"Most journalists and photographers neglect the dreadful social problems that have sprung up during China's transitional period, while I feel I have a responsibility to expose these problems," Lu said.

By Liang Chen