The 1930s were a crucial decade for China. This exhibition at Tsinghua University Art Museum presents the work of two outstanding photojournalists who reported about China at war from different angles. The Swiss correspondent Walter Bosshard had lived and worked in China since 1931. Robert Capa, the most famous war photographer of his time, came to China in 1938 as a member of a film crew.

Walter Bosshard and Robert Capa were friends, but also rivals regarding publications in Life. They covered similar stories and found themselves observing the same scenes of war. This gives us the unique chance to present a multi-layered narrative – about the history of China seen through Western eyes, about the question of truth in photojournalism, and about the power of photography in wartime.

(Banner image by Walter Bosshard, On the way to the Confucius temple in Qufu, ca. 1938, © Swiss Foundation for Photography / Archives of Contemporary History (ETH Zurich).)