Photo Exhibition Highlights U.S. Journalists’ Vision of a “Future City” in China’s Greater Bay Area
LAPost / Walnut, Calif. (November 23, 2025 )—Five celebrated American photojournalists, including a Pulitzer Prize winner and World Press Photo nominees, unveiled more than 60 works Sunday afternoon at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, offering a rare cross-cultural look at China’s rapidly evolving Greater Bay Area.
The exhibition — “Greater Bay Area Sightings: The Future We See” — is jointly presented by R&C Media Group, Inc., WCETV.com and Guangdong Radio & Television.
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
Shot during a weeklong assignment in September, the photographs capture moments from Hong Kong, Macao, Shenzhen and Guangzhou — a region of 86 million people that Chinese officials have branded as a testing ground for innovation and urban integration. The project features Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer Nick Ut; Ringo Chiu, a 2021 Pulitzer winner for Breaking News Photography; Los Angeles Times photographer Irfan Khan; and noted photojournalists Michael Nelson and Sarah Reingewirtz.
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
Throughout the afternoon, the photographers mingled with visitors, discussing their work and the experience of documenting what many describe as one of the world’s most dynamic metropolitan clusters.
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
Ut — whose 1972 image “Napalm Girl” remains one of the most searing photographs in modern journalism — said he was “deeply shocked” by the speed of change in the region. “I first visited China in the 1980s,” he said. “This time, everything felt new — the cities, the people, the food. For a photographer, it was a paradise.” He added that he is already planning a return trip in January.
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
Chiu highlighted an image taken inside the control center of Guangzhou Port — access he said he has never been granted in Los Angeles. “You learn the scale of a modern port when you see how the entire operation is orchestrated on those screens,” he said.
Nelson, known for his 1990s photograph of journalists crowding around President Clinton’s cat, said the Greater Bay Area offered a rare blend of architectural and human texture. He cited Macao’s Portuguese facades, Hong Kong’s street painters and Guangzhou’s neighborhood scenes — from elderly residents cooling off outdoors to women preparing fish for dinner — as moments that “carry the warmth of everyday life.”
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
The exhibition is organized into six thematic sections corresponding to the letters in “FUTURE”: Flowing, Unseen, Tech-driven, Unique, Resilient and Enjoyable. Curators say the structure is intended to frame the region not only as an economic hub, but as a model for how cities might navigate growth, technology and cultural identity in the decades ahead.
(Photo by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
Through these images, the organizers argue, the Greater Bay Area becomes less a geopolitical concept and more a visual meditation on continuity, change and possibility. The exhibition invites California audiences to consider their own urban futures — and how cities across the world are reshaping themselves amid rapid technological and social transformation.
The show opened Sunday and drew significant attendance from students, local residents and regional arts groups. It marks one of the most extensive U.S. presentations of work focused on the Guangdong–Hong Kong–Macao region by American newspaper photographers in recent years.
(Written by: Richard Ren/LAPost)
