A bigger picture

Late French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, after seeing Zhu's works, said to him, "you have eyes that can detect the truth in life".

Zhu, now aged 79, has captured images which are viewed by peers and critics as the pictorial epics of people at the grassroots level, revealing the ups and downs of time in a natural, sincere manner.

World in a Grain of Sand, an exhibition to review Zhu's career and work over the past five decades, will open at the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, in Ningxia Hui autonomous region, later this month and will run through June.

On show will be pictures depicting people living along the Yellow River, the country's second-longest waterway, and in the expanse of Northwest China. Dating back to the 1970s, they feature people and places that he has continued to photograph regularly, and are representative of the work for which he is most widely acclaimed.