Photographer Zhang Kechun documents striking scenery that meditates on the significance of landscape in modern Chinese national identity. Emphasizing the interactions between people and nature, and using bodies of water in China as a geographical point of departure, Zhang’s work illustrates the social, cultural, economic, and emotional impacts of modernization in China. His photographic series of the Northwestern region of China captures the poetic, subtle, and meditative essence of historical and modern aspects of the environment in visual representations inspired by landscape paintings from Song (960-1279) and Yuan dynasties (1279-1368). Manifesting the splendor and significance of the natural landscape, Zhang’s photography ruminates on modern landscapes as a visual archive embedded in the process of rapid modernization and ever-changing conditions of China.