The Yangtze river is usually celebrated by idealistic images of iconic places. But with Mother River, Yan Wang Preston wanted to undermine the deep-seated preference towards certain river places and their landscape representations. By selecting photographic sites at equally spaced locations, she did not necessarily produce a picturesque view. Instead, the project is filled with random landscapes that have rarely been photographed before.

Y7 600km from the river source, Y8 - 700km.



The project aims to tell a story of the entire width of China from its western highland to its eastern coast and demonstrates that in an era of abundant satellite mapping and saturated imagery, fresh views can still be created by a simple mapping exercise.

“In modern China though, it is the Yangtze that has been promoted by the central government as the main national icon. This is to do with the Yangtze’s importance for China’s development. It provides the most important trade route into the wealthiest area of China. It is the physical and metaphorical frontline of China’s modernisation, with over 30 hydroelectric dams planned or constructed on it. It provides an analogy for China’s political unification as it is the longest river in China which ‘connects’ all the regions from Tibet to Shanghai. For all these reasons the Yangtze is in focus, and that’s why I wanted to work on it.”



Y13, 1,200km from the river source



Y17 at 1,600km, and Y21 at 2,000km from the river source.



Y22, 2,100km from the river source

Y25, 2,400km from the river source.

The process: physical, unpredictable and not without risk

“My journey began at 5,400m above sea level in the uninhabited zone known as the Tibetan Plateau. From here, the Yangtze river flows through majestic mountains with almost no access at all, before hitting the industrial lowland near Shanghai.”

I had to deal with intense physical, intellectual and emotional challenges across wide-ranging terrains, often extreme Yan Wang Preston

Y40, 3,900km, and Y45 at 4,400km from source.



“Inhospitable terrain and huge distances made this project a modern-day adventure, with many potential hazards including high-altitude sickness, off-road driving, floods, sandstorms, earthquakes, landslides and mudslides.”

Y41, 4,100km from the river source. Films loaded back-to-front by mistake. Y49, 4,800km from the river source.



Y53, 5,200km from the river source



“Not surprisingly, the process of realising the Mother River project wasn’t without incident. Two locations (Y15 & Y16) remain unreached to this day, while 24 locations (Y39 - Y62) were originally depicted in poorly exposed images, because I loaded the films back-to-front by mistake. (I decided to re-shoot afterwards). It is precisely these imperfections that testify to the physicality of this highly conceptual project, and which also give it a particularly ‘human’ touch.”

Y57, 5,600km from the river source.



Y63 6,200km from the river source. The river mouth.



Yan Wang Preston is an award-winning British-Chinese artist. Mother River has won the Shiseido photography prize (Beijing, 2016) and Reviewers’ Choice Award at FORMAT (Derby, 2014). It was nominated for both the Prix Pictet award and The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation prize.