An eye for common folk

Images from the streets of Hefei make an amateur photographer's community come to life on the Internet

Girls sip soft drinks as they smile down from billboards. A migrant worker squats down, laughing as he examines his text messages. A fat security guard on a tricycle stretches to suck his yogurt from a container, his tight clothes bulging against the buttons. A lean-looking pancake vendor swiftly finishes his masterpiece.

Liu Tao, the street photographer, is enthralled by these images that flit past his eyes every day in Hefei, Anhui province. The photos of grassroots daily life that result present a sense of conflict. Through Liu's camera lens, those seemingly transient scenes of everyday life take on a more permanent nature.

The 32-year-old has amassed a collection of fun moments as well as intriguing individuals through his lens. For example, a crowded street is filled with people rushing in all directions, unaware of the contrasts they are creating in Liu's lens.

Liu wears a flat-brimmed hat, a pair of sports shoes and big headphones - you would encounter many boys in such city attire in the streets. It is difficult to associate him with his routine job walking up and down every alley in the neighborhood, knocking on doors asking for permission to write down water-meter readings.

Working as a water-meter reader in Hefei for years, he never imagined his life would change so much because of his photos. He became an overnight sensation when Sanlian Lifeweek, the Chinese lifestyle magazine, posted a series of his images on Sina Weibo in October. His photos are full of street drama and black humor: Some critics call him the Chinese Vivian Maier.

He calls himself a joker who loves fantasy, and his curiosity leads him to weave the whole city into his work - a child living in an adult body, he says.

"This era is absurd, bizarre and unique. Material pursuits become the chain that imprisons each person," Liu says. "It seems that there is increasingly more a lack of curiosity. I feel very strongly against this state of mind."

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/28/2014 page4)