Carolina Reid

Migrant workers in Shanghai
For my latest project I photographed aspiring, migrant, working-class inhabitants of Huangpu, a neighborhood in Shanghai. I documented their daily lives in their community, their living conditions and domestic problems. In an accompanying story and to provide a different perspective, I closely followed and photographed Jennifer, a 23-year-old middle-class migrant girl, both in Shanghai and in her hometown, Changzhou, where her family lives. Jennifer’s is a story of prosperity, of a girl who migrated to Shanghai in search of work and a better quality of life and succeeded. On the other hand, many migrants living in Huangpu are still struggling to improve their living conditions. In both my stories, the community and family around these characters play a key role in allowing them to lead a good life and the photographs present an intimate and optimistic view of their world.

Carolina Reid was born in Switzerland to an English father and Brazilian mother and grew up in Sao Paulo. Being exposed to these different cultures at a very young age, she developed a strong interest in human interaction, sociology and anthropology and became a keen traveller and adventure seeker. At 18, she moved to Rome where she took a degree in Communications Studies. She then moved to Shanghai. As she didn’t speak the language, photography became a way of entering into a dialogue with the local people. An important element of photography for her is its role in telling people’s stories, which can also be a force for social and political change.

anacarolinareid@gmail.com
carolinareid.wordpress.com