Family Stuff

In 2003 Huang Qingjun took a picture of a family in the foothills of Changbai Mountain: it was the beginning of Family Stuff. 

In 10 years, he visited most parts of China, and took pictures of 40 families. The aim of the project is to make people directly read the different Chinese families’ assets, stuffs and living status, and see the relationship of people, house, environment and society.  

Those families’ annual living expense differs from 700 to 200,000 Euros. During last ten years China is under high speed economic development, apartment price in cities increase 5-8 times, commodity price also raised a lot, many new and modern things emerge in Chinese families, however some objects from the past still remain. From the pictures we can see that people in different area own different kinds of family stuffs, and they keep the characteristics of nationalities. From their face we could feel their happiness; most of them are satisfied with their lives, happiness is not directly related with wealth. People believe that house is their most important family stuff, and the things which meet the daily demand are actually not so many. Every part of Family Stuff is a testament to the faith and condition of life in contemporary China, an evidence of those that have changed and remained during the modernization process.

Chinese photographer Huang Qingjun spent 10 years for his Steam Locomotive series and 11 years for his most important work Family Stuff. He is now working at a new series called Online shopping family stuff, capturing Chinese people with their goods purchased on Internet.