Silent witness to vanishing worlds

Trust came only after Ma traveled, slept and ate alongside them. That journey became the beginning of a project that lasted 12 years, following the performers across China as they earned money, raised children and grew old while the world that sustained their trade closed around them. As animal welfare ideas shifted, the old play between man and monkey became harder to accept. Younger villagers wanted no part of a stigmatized wandering occupation, leaving instead for factories in Guangdong province.

For over two decades, documentary photographer Ma has turned his lens away from China's glittering economic rise to capture the fragile worlds slipping through its cracks. By embedding himself for years alongside street performers, bachelor farmers and fading theater troupes, Ma creates intimate, unsparing portraits of ordinary people navigating profound social upheaval. His work does not romanticize or judge; instead, it preserves the raw dignity, complex compromises and quiet endurance of those living on the nation's margins.

"Every small person contains a whole world," Ma said. "I want to show people the 'whys' behind the surface."

Born in Luoyang, Henan province, in 1963, Ma did not start as a professional photographer. He worked in a glass factory and became interested in photography through a friend. In 1983, he began documenting historical sites near his hometown, developing film in a room whose windows he covered with quilts.

In the 1990s, he left the factory and became a newspaper photographer and investigative reporter, coming face-to-face with families seeking justice. Once, a couple whose son had died knelt before him and begged for help — a moment of desperation that forced Ma to confront the limits of his profession.

"I realized I could not carry such a heavy social responsibility through photography," he later recalled.

He stepped away from daily news reporting to work independently, focusing his lens on the human lives behind public disputes. He wanted to ask not only what had happened, but why people lived as they did.