Eastern images

With the world gearing up for the Beijing Olympics later this summer, Edinburgh’s City Art Centre is offering a well-timed opportunity to assess first hand the changing face of life in the most populated country on Earth.

Starting on Saturday July 5 and running until September 14, China: A Photographic Portrait is a unique exhibition documenting the daily lives of ordinary people during five decades of unprecedented social and cultural change in China.

Comprising 600 images and 33 short films covering the years between 1951 and 2003, the exhibition is split across four distinctive themes – existence, relationships, desire and time – designed to portray the impact that radical domestic upheaval in China has had on the individual in recent generations.

The exhibition is the first major showcase of contemporary candid photography ever to come out of China, and the City Art Centre is the only place in the UK the exhibition can be seen before it returns to the Guangdong Museum of Art after a two-year European tour. Be sure to catch what promises to be a highly illuminating glimpse of everyday life inside the world’s foremost emerging power.

China: A Photographic Portrait is at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre from Saturday July 5 to Sunday September 14, 10am to 5pm Mondays to Saturdays, and from noon to 5pm on Sundays. Admission is £5 (£2.50-£3.50 concessions).