Ai Weiwei: Beijing Photographs, 1993-2003
by: Ai Weiwei /John Tancock / Stephanie H. Tung

Hardcover. MIT Press, 1st, 2019, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in black cloth stamped with silver lettering. an autobiography in pictures, 400 pages. Ai Weiwei is China's most celebrated contemporary artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. In April 2011, when Ai disappeared into police custody for three months, he quickly became the art world's most famous missing person. Since then, Ai Weiwei's critiques of China's repressive regime have ranged from playful photographs of his raised middle finger in front of Tiananmen Square to searing memorials to the more than 5,000 schoolchildren who died in shoddy government construction in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Against a backdrop of strict censorship, Ai has become a hero on social media to millions of Chinese citizens. This book, prohibited from publication in China, offers an intimate look at Ai Weiwei's world in the years after his return from New York and preceding his imprisonment and global superstardom. The photographs capture Ai's emergence as the uniquely provocative artist that he is today. There is no more revealing portrait of Ai Weiwei's life in China than this. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.