Chen Changfen (b. 1941) began to photograph the Great Wall twenty years before the Chinese government officially adopted it as the national symbol in 1984. This fascinating book presents a small fraction of his decades-long study of the monumental form and conveys the fertile range of themes and ideas that Chen has investigated, each informed by traditional Chinese art, history, and philosophy. Combining a unique blend of traditional and contemporary technical processes, Chen’s richly evocative photographs at once celebrate the remarkable series of building campaigns that produced the Wall and memorialize the thousands of conscripted laborers whose lives were sacrificed to its construction.