Snapshots in time

A new book collects the oral history of an old trade - that of rural photography from the days before cameras were widely available. Xing Yi reports.

Into the Village Comes the Photographer develops a portrait of a bygone breed of rural photographers in Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces, who plied their trade before cameras became ubiquitous.

Author Wang Yong says he felt a responsibility to record this largely forgotten legacy.