chicagotribune.com

As a subject of contemporary photographs and videos, China has become in our decade what South Africa was for the 1990s. Everybody wanting to appear on the "cutting edge" shows such work, and Chicago already has seen a two-museum survey and a number of exhibitions for individual artists at a commercial gallery.

But "Made in China," the exhibition for seven artists (and two writers) at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, is different. Rather than give an overview of exclusively Chinese art, the show brings together works by Canadian, British, German, Chinese and American photographers who explore facets of the impact of emerging Chinese industries on native and foreign cultures.

The most touching piece is the color photo essay by Polly Braden that follows a young Chinese woman from a rural village to a job as a factory manager and then on a visit back home. The conditions in which she lives and works look dehumanizing, but the work raises the woman economically and in fairly short order appears to change her. Braden actually watches her transformation into a consumer, ultimately showing her dazzling her relatives with the pictures she took on a cell phone. This is progress, but is it really desirable?