Among the many photographs of the multiple shifts in the geopolitical landscape across Asia and the United States that characterized the last decades of the 20th century, Xiangcheng Liu captured two seminal historical events: the rise of China after its economic reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev.
For these accomplishments, Xiangcheng Liu was named Photographer of the Year by the Associated Press in 1989 and 1991, and in 1992 he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Live News Photography, along with his Moscow colleague, for outstanding coverage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the Kodak Award of the American Overseas Club. The same year he received the Kodak Award from the Overseas Club of America. Xiangcheng Liu's photographs of China are widely recognized by the Chinese public as capturing a changing era, and are unique in their combination of local sensibilities and independent perspectives.
Xiangcheng Liu was the first Time magazine photojournalist to work in Beijing since 1978, and he went on to serve as chief photographer for the Associated Press in Beijing, Los Angeles, New Delhi, Seoul and Moscow. Liu is also the author of several photographic publications, including China After Mao (Penguin Press, 1983); China, Portrait of a Nation (Tassen Press, 2008); One Nine Eleven: A Hundred Years of Imagery from the Opium Wars to the Warlords' War (Hong Kong University Press, 2011); Shanghai: 1842-2010. Portrait of a Great City (Penguin Press, 2010).In 2015, Liu Xiangcheng founded the Shanghai Photography Art Center.
