ZHANG Hai was born in 1976 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China. He studied architecture in Chongqing, China, and Miami, Florida, USA, and earned his master’s degree in 2001. In 2008, after 14 years of study and practice of architecture and urban planning, he chose to devote himself entirely to exploring his concerns for the human condition through photography.

Prior to this shift, he had already worked on several personal long-term photographic projects such as, “To Kill A Mockingbird,” an attempt to break down stereotypes in America’s Deep South; and “Chinese, overshadowed by China,” about people both in China and the US seen as individuals rather statistics that define “the big picture.” Since 2008, he has been traveling regularly back to China to photograph the disadvantaged within the ever-changing and sprawling Chinese urbanized landscape.

In 2009, Zhang was awarded the ‘Rafael Vinoly Architecture Research Fellowship’ that, over the three subsequent years, supported his intensive photographic inquiry about living conditions of dwellers in two major metropolitan centers, Shenzhen and Shanghai. Combining photography with his wide experience and network in the field of architecture and urban planning, the output of this investigation remains unmatched today, mixing in his up-close contextual imagery together with first hand information. A book compiled from the research will be published in September 2011.

In 2010, Zhang received, an Honorable Mention at the New York held 2010 International Photography Awards in the “professional editorial category” for his photo-essay on the native population of Shanghai that still lives in inhospitable neighborhoods left out of today’s massive urban renewal.

Deeply rooted in the humanistic “concerned photography” tradition, both in terms of his more intimate personal subjects and of his broader projects related to society at large, Zhang’s work has been exhibited at the Godwin-Ternbach Museum in Queens, NY; Kansas State University; and in other galleries and institutional venues in New York City, Washington, DC, San Jose, Costa Rica, and China. His awards include also a two time artist-in-residency from the Monte Azul Center of Arts of Costa Rica to document a self-sustained mountain village in the southern region of this Central America country, in 2008 and 2010. He has lectured at the New School’s India-China Institute, the Brooklyn Public Library, Asia Society, and the Asian-American Arts Centre, all in New York City. Zhang is a member of adjunct faculty at Parson The New School for Design in New York City. He commutes between New York and China.